


Point Of View

by comicroute



Category: Batman (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Barbara Gordon is in here as best friend #2, Gen, Hiatus, No Romance, Season 1, Wally and Dick best bros forever, creatures of the invisible undead, daddy bats, except Bruce is so freaking terrible at showing he cares, from both Wally and Dick's perspectives, insane asylum, many misunderstandings, one hint of Harley abuse but lets face it that's canon, slow build-up, so I guess that's kind of like character death, temporarily schizophrenic character, this is in an angsty genre but there's comic relief, when this gets going it really gets going
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 22:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4722872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comicroute/pseuds/comicroute
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>>>DISCONTINUED. </p><p>I honestly don't know why I haven't deleted this yet. Nostalgic purposes? Whatever the reason is, don't click this. If you really want to read it, comment and I can link you to where 99% of this fic has been posted. It's basically finished, but will never continue to be posted here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I'm finally putting this up. I'm so excited. First, go read all of the tags, and remember very clearly that there will be no ships in this. But for you Birdflash shippers out there, don't worry, it's perfectly satisfying enough.
> 
> I've also posted this on Fanfiction.net under ComicRoute.
> 
> I'll be posting every week on Friday.
> 
> Pleaserecognisemyhardwork. Iwrotetheentireficbeforestartingtopost.
> 
> Enjoy!

_"Flat line, no pulse, but eyes open,_

_single file like soldiers on a mission,_

_if there's no war outside our heads,_

_why are we losing?"_

_-Life Less Frightening, Rise Against_

* * *

Ironically, the voices started in the therapist's office.

Well, it was just one voice but, at the time, it felt like many. There was something different about the voice of the dead. There wasn't a specific source. It was as if the sound engulfed a person just to make them listen. Over time, Dick had adjusted, and it had gotten to the point where, if he just paid the least amount of attention, the voice sounded like any other normal person's. But right there, at that moment, that wasn't the case. He was just a teenager freaked out and panicking in the office of what should have been a one-time visit to a therapist, who he had been trying for the past five minutes to convince that nothing was wrong with him.

"How have you been taking the loss, Dick?" Miss. Frances asked cheerfully, in her eerie way that Dick was becoming fast accustomed to, dipping her head to try and look into Dick's eyes, which were staring at the ground. Dick fought the urge to dramatically scowl.

"Now or before? Now I'm just angry. You know, one of those stages of grief?" And, in her case, stage of PTSD or something equally serious? Honestly, what was that woman's problem? It felt as if she were deliberately trying to prove that something was wrong with him. Miss. Frances nodded and scribbled a little on her clipboard.

"Do you blame him for leaving?" she asked instead. "Is that why you're angry?"

"He's stupid. That's why he died. You can't be angry with stupidity," Dick spat curtly back. It was true. He was angry. But the source was unclear and, if he knew anything at all, Dick was sure that he was less mad at his best friend for being constantly stupid and more mad at himself for letting his best friend be constantly stupid. But, really, that was just how Wally had been.

He hated thinking about it. Ever since the mental simulation gone wrong with the rest of the team, Dick had realised that he wanted no part in becoming Batman's clone, and it was at a point where anything that resembled being like Batman personality-wise had Dick cringing away from it. Brooding over the past, over what he couldn't change, over failures that would never be corrected was a very signature trait of his mentor's, and Dick knew that he shouldn't follow in those footsteps. From a mental health standpoint, ignoring the event completely wasn't a good habit either, but he couldn't help it. He hated it. He despised remembering it. So Dick blocked it out and blocked it out, sitting stiffly in his chair, until he couldn't think anymore. All he had was a strange pain in his chest and he didn't want to think about anything anymore, especially not about Wally.

"I'm not that stupid!"

"What?" Dick started, his back instantly straightening and his hand darting to feel his hips, where he suddenly wished his utility belt was.

"What?" Miss. Frances responded, instantly alert.

"That- did you hear that?" Dick stammered.

"You heard that?" the resonating voice said again.

Dick's eyes widened, but he couldn't make more words move out of his mouth amidst all of the shock. Miss. Frances smiled almost childishly. "Calm down," she soothed. "There are construction workers upstairs, and they've been at it all morning." She winked. Dick didn't know why she was winking.

Dick also didn't think that drills could speak English. "Tell me, Dick, have you been this jumpy lately?" Miss. Frances continued, her high pitched voice ringing in Dick's ears.

The acrobat frowned, heart racing, but he was so used to the adrenaline rush of unknown situations that he managed to keep his voice steady despite the nerves. "I've always been jumpy." His mind was already elsewhere. He needed to get out of there - he wasn't crazy. Crazy was the Joker. Crazy was a little bit of Batman, entirely necessary to catch baddies like they did. He wasn't crazy. But the room was still suffocating.

"Has it increased since the incident?" Miss. Frances pressed.

"...No," Dick answered softly.

Dick walked out of that office ten minutes later, entirely unnerved and spectacularly unsatisfied. He had been beyond uncomfortable in there. Sharing feelings wasn't something that he did, and he supposed that, according to an expert, that was all the more reason to get 'help'. But even if he had wanted to, Dick couldn't get full help from a random civilian. He couldn't explain his frustrations during missions, he couldn't tell her the names of his teammates, he couldn't rant to her about how he hated being  _Dick Grayson_  and he just wanted to be  _Robin_. He couldn't show her the true scope of how far his and one Wally West's friendship had extended, how they had trusted each other with their lives every day, how they had managed to keep smiling no matter what situation they were in as long as they were near one another. He couldn't even tell her how he had died, and it certainly hadn't been from something so simple as a mugging. Bruce had created that scenario, and Dick was only left to wonder why it so much resembled the deaths of Bruce's parents.

Black Canary, or Dinah as she preferred to be called, would have been a more suitable option, as she knew Robin, but she didn't know Dick. Dick supposed that Bruce really didn't know how to handle therapists. Talking only about one half of his life and lying about the other offered no relief.

Dick had also settled with the conclusion that the voice he had heard in there had just been part of his imagination. Maybe he really did need some recovery time.

Because he swore that it had sounded just like Wally.

Dick didn't hear it again until school a week later. He was drifting off in English class, a subject that he was good at in the same way that he had to be good at everything else. The only thing distracting him was himself. His thoughts were wandering, and wandering, and straying so far off that they were becoming hopelessly lost and tangled. Eventually, they became so lost that there was nothing in his mind at all.

Dick had to consider if that might have been his own relaxing mechanism. There was always something on his mind. Training, school, missions, identities - sometimes, he wanted to just  _be._  So, that was what he was doing, his mind wiped clean and his eyes starting to burn because he was forgetting to blink.

"lease...ick...D...p...long...he..p...l…" It sounded like a broken remix, breaks within the echoing techno giving off a feeling of chaos and discord. Dick's heart sped up. It sounded just the same as before - as it had within the office. "Ca...you...me...heard...you heard...you heard me...fore...you heard me before!" When a full sentence did come up, it wasn't as soft and confused sounding as the jumbled syllables from before. It was harsh. It was loud and harsh and screeched against the inside of Dick's skull. He slammed his palms against his ears.

"Can...hear me? Is that...blocking your...are you… can you hear me? Pl…" Dick began shaking his head and rubbing his ears, hoping for that awful sound to go away, but if anything it only got louder. "I can go through...object...solid...sound waves...sure that your hands won't do anything."

What was going on? His thoughts were screaming, telling him to run from it, but he couldn't run. He couldn't even get up. He was in the middle of English class. Running out shouting was sure to earn him a trip straight to the counselor.

"Richard, is there something that you would like not to hear?" Dick instinctively darted his hands away from his face and looked up to see his English teacher glaring down at him with the heat of a thousand suns. Dick blinked and gaped, unsure of how to transition from the surreal panic attack-like event that had just happened to consoling his offended teacher.

"Uh, no," breathed Dick, attempting to calm his racing heart. Mr. Billard, his teacher, didn't look the least bit amused. He must have mistaken the cause of the catastrophe of emotions on Dick's face for something else, though, and only stood there for a second more before walking back to his desk.

However, the second that Mr. Billard moved, Dick could clearly see what was directly behind him. It felt like his heart jumped and stopped at the same time.

"Don't you recognise me?" Wally asked, looking just as colourful and healthy as he had the last time that Dick had seen him. The only difference was that his emerald eyes glittered with a suspicious liquid and his mouth held a morphed expression of sadness that was entirely unsuited for his face.

Dick screamed.

* * *

He awoke in a hospital bed. Dick knew that for certain because he was awake before he opened his eyes, and the incessant beeping of the heart monitor was all too clear. Usually, after he was heavily injured and ended up in such a place, he wouldn't remember what had happened until he was given a reminder by someone walking in or by the room itself.

But that time, he remembered. He remembered perfectly, and it felt as if he hadn't slept at all, because Dick could still feel the tendrils of panic and stress gripping his heart. He felt like crying and, suddenly, for the first time in a long time, Dick wanted anything but to be alone.

He changed his mind a couple of seconds later.

"Finally! Thank God you're okay." The voice sounded almost as panicked as Dick felt, on top of concerned and nervous. It kickstarted Dick's own heart to start racing again and the tear that was gathering in his eye fell at last. The monitor went insane. He didn't want to look around the room. The voice sounded just like Wally's and Dick had seen Wally and that meant Wally was probably with him in that room and that was a scary, scary thought because  _Wally had exploded, he shouldn't have been alive, couldn't have been alive._

Dick wasn't insane. He swore that he wasn't insane.

"Are you crying?" Wally's voice exclaimed. "Are you okay? No, no, you're not okay, you freaking fainted, man, and I know that's probably because of me but-you-really-shouldn't-be-afraid-it's-just-me-and-I-can't-believe-you-can-even-hear-me. It's-a-miracle-dude-I've-been-trying-for-so-long-"

"Shut up!" Dick screeched, and Wally did. Dick slowly exhaled. "You're not real, you're not real-"

"What?" Not-Wally sounded so offended that Dick stuttered in his own chanting. He continued, though, over Not-Wally's words, still hearing them and not wanting to at all. "I'm real. I'm real! Dick, no, I'm real! Stop!" he was frantic, suddenly appearing at the foot of Dick's bed. Dick shut his eyes tightly. "I'm right here, man. Please. You have to help me. You're the only one who can hear me, let alone see me," Wally begged. Then the redhead took a deep breath and shouted, "Dick!"

Dick was startled into silence, Wally's shout bouncing around inside of his head.

"Answer something for me, Dick, please. At least give me that," Wally continued softly, and Dick slowly opened his eyes to see stunning green ones instead. But there was something different about them. Even without their happy shine, Dick thought that there was something off, but he couldn't put a word to it. "What happened?" When Dick didn't respond, he elaborated. "What happened to me?"

"Exploded," Dick croaked out softly. "You exploded. We...got a mission. In California. They were making some illegal chemical compounds or something, but they found out we were inspecting them, so they...put a bomb. In the building. You...I found out, and you grabbed it and ran, but it…it exploded."

Dick remembered that. He remembered standing, pressed against the window of the building that had once held the bomb and seeing the yellow streak that was Kid Flash zipping away. What he remembered most, however, was seeing his best friend reach a building some ways away from the window that Dick had been looking out of just as that building seemed to explode for no reason.

He used to remember a body, too. But those memories were buried so deeply that Dick didn't think he could ever dig them out again. That was the moment when Dick thought that he had discovered why Wally's eyes looked so different.

They were dead.

"I'm really dead," Wally said shakily. "I actually...died." There was silence for a moment. "I never really thought that I could die, y'know? I've, we've, gone into so many situations where most other people would die plenty times over, but us… We didn't. And I guess I just got so used to that."

"Are you trying to tell me that you're a ghost?" Dick swallowed. Whatever that was happening was not happening. It couldn't be happening. But Wally's eyes creased downwards and his lips parted just the smallest bit and he looked like he wanted to cry.

"What else could I be? I can't touch anything, I go right through. The only thing I don't go through is the dirt," he hissed, before his voice softened sadly. "No one can hear me or see me. Winds usually blow me away - literally. I can't feel anything but myself. I'm never hot or cold, but I can still feel my own emotions, and they're usually painful." He continued past what was necessary to answer Dick's question, probably speaking more than he had first intended, and he didn't seem as if he were able to close his mouth. "It's like- it's like- oh my God, Dick, I'm just- I'm so happy that I finally have someone to talk to. How long's it been? I don't know, I don't know, but it's been so long, and-"

That was when Wally finally burst into tears, with the illusion of salty water that disappeared the second it fell off of his cheek. "Dick, you have to help me. Please, help me," he sobbed.

"I don't know how," Dick breathed, eyes wide and, though he wouldn't say so later, tearing up at the sight of his friend that looked so real, so solid, crying as if he would never be able to stop. He didn't think he'd ever seen his friend like that. He hadn't thought he ever would. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Dick felt so spent that he couldn't garner up the energy to cry with him.

"Don't know how to do what?" Dick jumped and whipped his head around to stare at the door opposite of where he had been originally looking. There was a tall woman in a white coat standing there with her mousey brown hair gathered tightly into a ponytail, a clipboard in her hand and a frown on her face. She was waiting for an answer.

Wally answered for him. "How to help me," he said, wiping away his tears angrily and attempting to slam his fist on the table beside Dick's bed. He only grew more frustrated when it went straight through. Dick's eyebrows creased and his eyes dried in relief at the distraction from the onslaught of distraught emotions.

"Calm down," he demanded, and Wally only crossed his arms tightly. Dick was surprised at how easily he was able to get used to Wally's presence. Then again, Dick and Wally were the best of friends, weren't they?

"Why can't you calm down?" the nurse asked slowly.

Dick stared at her. "You can't see-" Of course she couldn't see Wally. But Wally just looked so real and Dick was so used to him being real that the acrobat was having a hard time comprehending that it was possible for someone not to notice the redhead.

"No," Wally interrupted quickly, and he looked frantic. "No one else can see me but you. I've tried."

Dick was about to demand why Wally hadn't told him that earlier, but by the look on the nurse's face, he knew that wouldn't help the situation at all. He decided to pretend that Wally was just as he had always been. Wally was there and Dick wasn't crazy, so Dick was just going to think that everything was normal. It was easier.

"See what?" she asked.

"The birds," Wally said quickly.

"The birds," Dick echoed. Her eyebrows shot up her forehead and he glared briefly at Wally, who shrugged sheepishly. "Uh, yeah, outside. They kept flying into the window and I was telling them to calm down," he elaborated, tilting his head with an award-winning smile.

To Dick's distress, the nurse glanced at her clipboard and quickly scribbled something down. He barely kept himself from groaning aloud.

"Alright, well, I'm just here to check your vitals. If everything's good, we'll call your dad to come pick you up," she explained as she moved over to the heart monitor. Dick nodded and the room was quickly bathed in silence. At least, silence for the nurse.

"You have a dad?" Wally exclaimed, and Dick was startled by the sudden change in subject. Though, Wally never did have the best attention span. "I thought- y'know, the circus and all-"

"Kind of. He's my guardian," Dick whispered when the nurse was at the sink on the other side of the room. Then he frowned. "Wait, hold up. You know my name's Dick, where I go to school, my backstory, and yet you don't know who I live with?"

Wally frowned. "What was I supposed to do, Google you? Searching up 'Dick' probably isn't the best course of action, dude. I don't know your last name, remember? It's not like Google gives us non-movie stars our family trees, anyway. I don't care who your family is." Dick snorted at that. Wally would be surprised how much of a family tree Google could give for the wards of billionaires.

"So you don't recognise me?" asked Dick incredulously.

"...Should I?"

If Dick were honest, he found it kind of endearing how Wally hadn't immediately jumped on stalking his entire history upon finding out his first name. "Nah," Dick said. "You're good."

"You're good," the nurse copied, straightening up. "Your father will be here in a few minutes." She smiled kindly and left.

Wally pouted. "Oh come on, nurses were never that nice to me whenever  _I_ ended up in the hospital."

Dick shrugged it off, figuring that Wally would find out why normal civilians tended to be so nice to him sooner or later. But since the nurse was gone, Dick found that he was definitely not in the mood for casual chatter. "How come I'm the only one who can see you, if you're a ghost like you say?"

"If I'm not a ghost and you can see me, what else could I be?" Wally frowned. "A hallucination? Yeah, right." It seemed that the redhead was more unnerved by the possibility of Dick thinking that he was a hallucination than he let on, however, because he quickly continued talking. "But I really don't know. Barry can't see me. Iris can't see me. Did you do something...special before hearing me?"

"'Special'?" Dick snorted. "Like what, dark magic? I don't know how to summon ghosts, Wally."

"You're a bat. Dark magic is totally a possibility. Not that magic is real or anything," replied the redhead. "I meant something with your mind. M'gann can kind of mentally force her way into other people's thoughts, right? That's something with her mind. Hers is a species thing, of course, but...I don't know, it's worth thinking about."

It was worth thinking about. "Well, I was spacing out? In class, at least. Yeah, I was spacing out in English," Dick replied. Wally perked up.

"Spacing out? That's it? Spacing out as in your mind was kind of blank and you weren't thinking about anything? It actually makes sense," Wally rambled excitedly. "If your mind is blank, then you can hear things that would otherwise be obscured by your thoughts. Or you could hear me because you weren't thinking about anything and I could get my...ghostly sound waves or something into your head. And now that you've heard and seen me, you're aware of my existence, which means you can hear and see me all the time." He grinned. "I never knew you were a spacey person."

"I'm not," Dick defended. "Just during class when I already know everything that's being said."

"Wow, modest much?"

"It's true," shrugged the acrobat.

It was finally settling in. The scare was over, and Dick had momentarily forgotten about the horrible grieving line of events for the sole fact that he was able to banter with Wally as if they were both suiting up at the mountain again. But finally, it was finally registering. What if Wally really was a ghost? As much as Dick didn't want him to be dead…

It was better than him being gone.

And that made him happier than he'd been in months. That happiness was reflected in Wally's face, the same one that had been sad and angry minutes before. Wally was a ghost, Dick decided to believe. A ghost who had said that he hadn't been able to get anyone else to see him. Did that mean he had felt as alone as Dick had? Dick had lost a best friend, the one and only person who he had confided everything to. Whenever he saw something funny, he hadn't had anyone to tell it to. Whenever he was sad, he hadn't had anyone to express it to.

And neither had Wally.

That was when the door decided to open. Dick whipped his head around briefly to look at one Bruce Wayne, but, much to Bruce's puzzlement, he turned his head back to the window to look pointedly at Wally.

Wally rose his eyebrows, but otherwise didn't react. "You have a dad who looks like that and is still single? I'm finally not the only single attractive man," he commented. Dick laughed.

"Uh, Dick?" Bruce prodded.

Dick turned to Bruce and grinned, which only grew as Bruce's eyes widened in surprise. He couldn't blame his guardian, though. When was the last time that Dick had actually looked happy? "Hey, Bruce Wayne!" he exclaimed with a wave.

Wally sputtered.

"Holy shit!" he yelled in surprise, rushing right up to Bruce's shoulder and staring him in the face. "Oh my God, I knew I recognised him! Man, I never watch the news. Is this why- freaking hot damn your dad is Bruce Wayne, no wonder you're so filthy rich!"

Dick couldn't hold it in. He burst into a fit of cackles at the blunt awe displayed on Wally's face, and when he had slightly recovered in order to look back up again, Bruce's pure expression of utter bewilderment sent him through another round.


	2. Chapter 2

"Dare I ask what's gotten Master Dick into such a frenzy?" Alfred asked from where he was cleaning the window sills of the dining hall. Bruce Wayne, leaning against the railing of their manor's winding staircase, shrugged.

"I have no clue. I got a phone call from the school saying that he had a panic attack and fainted. He even screamed, which he never does. But when I went to the hospital to pick him up, he said my name and just started laughing," Bruce answered, confused. "And he's been smiling ever since."

"Well, then I suppose you should be grateful that your ward is so happy," said Alfred as he turned with a raised eyebrow to consider his master. "Especially since he hasn't been happy for quite a while now."

"I know, I know," waved Bruce. "But... it isn't natural," he muttered. "Dick doesn't even have a reason to be happy."

"Perhaps he's simply moved on?"

"I wish. But it's too sudden for that. I need to look into it."

Alfred rolled his eyes. "I do wish you would consider not treating Master Richard as if he were an experiment. Sadly, I can't request that of you because it seems to be the only way that you know how to be a father."

"You know me so well, Alfred," Bruce commented wryly, before moving off the staircase and into the manor's rather large library.

Meanwhile, Dick couldn't remember the last time that he'd felt so light. It was as if his heart wasn't constricted by his ribs at all, like his lungs were balloons of latex and not layers of flesh. Before, his organs had been submerged six feet underwater, but right then? They were aired out, as if they had been hung on a clothesline to dry.

All that while sitting in the outside courtyard at school.

"I really want a sandwich," Wally commented from across the table, where only Dick was sitting. The mathlete had been let out early from his math class because his teacher had figured out long ago that he would need to be transferred to a higher math level, but had yet to sign the papers. That left Dick with a free pass to the class, which was completely fine with him. Wally ogled the peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the acrobat's hands. "Like that one."

"Do ghosts even get hungry?" Dick asked.

"No," Wally huffed. "What am I going to do? Starve to death?"

Dick smiled maliciously as he bit slowly into the bread. "Then it's all mine."

"Mean!"

"You can't touch it, anyway," laughed Dick.

"Doesn't mean you have to eat it in front of me," whined Wally, despite the fact that it was Dick's lunch time.

"Dick?" Dick felt his cheeks redden as Wally whipped his head around to watch another red head, a girl, poke her head through the door that connected to the main hallway. The acrobat tried to imagine how he must have looked from the window, laughing to himself while alone in the courtyard, but figured that he would rather not think about it.

"Hey, Babs," responded Dick.

"'Babs'?" Wally echoed. "More like Babes, if you ask me."

"Hey, Dick," greeted Barbara. She moved fully away from the door and kicked it closed behind her, swinging a lunchbox by her side. Dick bit his tongue as she moved to sit on top of Wally, whose eyes widened as he dived away just in time for her to settle herself. She must have still seen the painfully amused expression on Dick's face, though, because she frowned when she glanced up at him. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing," Dick dismissed. Wally stuck out his tongue from behind the girl.

Barbara studied the acrobat for a moment, and if Dick weren't so used to being scrutinised by Batman, he might have been uncomfortable. "Who gave you a vacation to the Caribbean?"

"What?" Dick blinked, pausing in the middle of his sandwich. The girl rolled her eyes.

"You look really happy," she explained.

Dick snorted. "Am I not allowed to be?"

Barbara shrugged, but gave him a small smile anyway. "I've been trying to get you to for a long time, yet you're smiling bright and sunny without a problem right after having gone to the hospital." She probably wouldn't have admitted it, but Dick felt guilty to see a flicker of concern flit over her face.

"Really, I'm fine," Dick reassured. "I just... discovered something yesterday. It cheered me up. Besides, it's Friday, how can someone not be happy on a Friday?"

"Parents with children that they hate," Wally quipped. He was ignored.

Barbara shook her head incredulously. "Whatever you say." She was smiling but, much to Dick's dismay, the both of them still lapsed into silence.

It was only then that he took the time to notice how much their relationship had changed. Dick had gotten quiet and withdrawn after Wally's... passing. He had been so absorbed in his own feelings of pain that he had taken no note of how he had acted towards others, and how much he had been damaging the parts of his life that he had still had. That caused his lips to morph into a frown as Barbara focused her attention on her spaghetti.

"You guys are friends, but you don't talk?" Wally asked, confused. Dick glanced at Barbara.

"Do you have some paper?" he asked. The girl nodded and took a small notebook from her lunchbox as Dick reached into his pocket for a pencil. He tilted the writing surface towards him when she handed it over, ignoring the curious cock of her head.

 **We weren't like this before** , he scribbled quickly over the paper.

Wally was still hovering behind Barbara, but he rushed over when Dick gave him a miniscule nod. Reading the scrawl, he frowned. "What changed?"

"Why'd you need the paper?" Barbara asked as Dick ripped out the page and folded it up, sliding it into his pocket.

"A note," he replied simply.

* * *

Miss. Frances was infinitely curious when Dick walked into her office that day with a bounce in his step. His reasoning was that the faster that they could get through the session, the faster that Dick would never have to go back there again.

Being a therapist, though, she seemed to ignore the blatantly obvious question and delved straight into the indirect. "How has your day been?"

Dick grinned. "Great. Yours?"

She smiled. "Fantastic, now that I see a smile on your face. Anything really good happen?"

Dick paused to mentally review his day. He had made his own lunch in the morning because he couldn't stand still, he got stared at in the hallways and especially in English class, he was called to the nurse's office, he got to skip math class, and, "I got my friend back." He glanced at Wally, who was standing with crossed arms over Miss. Frances's shoulder, reading her notes.

"Oh? What friend?" she asked, placing her clipboard down into her lap.

"Her name is Barbara"-Wally pouted theatrically at that-"and we've been distant for a while now. I decided to talk to her more in the halls after lunch, though, and I think she's excited to be a close friend of mine again."

Miss. Frances hummed and nodded. "Why did you become distant?" she inquired.

Dick shrugged, feeling completely awkward talking about the reason when the reason was standing in the room, but it seemed as if Wally understood anyway. The redhead stilled in shock.

"Wait...," he started hesitantly. "Am I why-"

He was cut off by Miss. Frances. "Was it because of Wally?" Everything she said sounded happy and casual, as if her words didn't hold bigger weight than she gave them credit for. Or maybe that impression was only given by the fact that she had a high voice and one of the thickest accents that Dick had ever heard.

"I just didn't think there was a point in talking to anyone," he answered honestly. Wally's face dropped in guilt.

"I'm the reason that you have to go to a shrink?" he squeaked. Dick felt his palms sweat suspiciously.

But the therapist only continued to smile. "That's good. It means you're moving on," she commented, chipper. "What do you think has started allowing you to cope?"

"A friend," Dick replied. "A really good friend came back."

"It seems like you have lots of friends. Are you popular at school?"

"No, but the friends that I do have are really close."

Miss. Frances nodded and wrote some more. Wally gawked at her notes behind her. "He's totally social enough, you stupid lady!"

Dick snorted in an effort to contain his laughter. The woman must have mistaken it for a sneeze, because she smoothly threw over a box of tissues.

"Does anything in particular remind you of Wally?" she asked. "Other people's actions, words, voices?"

"Of course," Dick scowled. "Everything does." Particularly since Wally was actually following him around.

Miss. Frances nodded. "And what about the voices? Are the voices from other people, like your classmates? Or do you hear voices that no one else does?"

Dick barely fought to keep his eyes from widening. Wally had no such restraint, though, and looked openly shocked. The acrobat hadn't considered himself to be obvious about the fact that he was being clung to by his best friend's ghost, but maybe the therapist had a part time job in exorcism.

That was a scary thought.

"I hear voices," Dick agreed, and Wally waved his arms in panic. Miss. Frances stilled. "Yours," he finished, smiling innocently and looking behind her at Wally.

Wally glared as Miss. Frances relaxed and gave a genuinely amused chuckle. "You shouldn't joke about that, Richard," she warned. Dick shrugged.

"I wasn't."

Thirty minutes of casual conversation and uncomfortable interrogation later found Dick walking out of the office with less of a bounce in his step than before. Wally was right on his heels, making sure to turn his head and stick his tongue out obnoxiously at the therapist as they walked away. Bruce had just entered through the doors to the waiting room, tie swung around his shoulder from the wind outside, and Dick laughed cheekily at the sight. Bruce only rolled his eyes as he went to talk in hushed tones with the therapist at the office door.

"So, Daddy Bats isn't actually real?" Wally asked, attempting to lean casually against the arm of the couch, but failing when he fell through. Dick coughed to cover his giggles and took out his phone.

[What do you mean?] Wally looked at the phone screen that was opened to messages, which the redhead saw was sending texts to Dick's number, as his body remained half impaled by the couch. Dick turned his head to avoid looking at the unnerving sight that was his best friend divided by a piece of furniture.

"Well, we all thought Batman was your dad, but it's actually Bruce Fucking Wayne, so who's Batman? Come on, it's not like I can tell anyone," the boy elaborated. Dick's eyebrows shot up his forehead.

[Just imagine Bruce in a Bat costume, dude.]

Wally huffed and opened his mouth to answer, jumping away from the couch as he did so, but paused instead. Dick braced himself but, to his surprise, Wally only took a deep breath and slowly rubbed his face. "So, first you tell me that your daddy is the richest guy in the state, and then you say that said richest guy is also the scariest guy in America."

[Pretty much.]

"Who dresses up like a bat and beats up clowns every night."

Dick cackled. "Yup."

The little girl kicking her legs on the other end of the couch looked at him strangely. Dick swallowed and glanced back at his phone, pretending to be doing something productive, but he could still feel the unashamed gaze of the child on the side of his face. Wally didn't say much more, preferring to simply stand there and absorb the information when Bruce walked by. The man flashed the secretary a sunny smile on his way past, and Wally scrunched up his face.

"Seeing Batman smile is so weird," he commented, wrinkling his nose.

"Ready to go?" Bruce asked as he reached Dick, who was already standing up. The teenager quickly pocketed his phone.

"Yup," he said.

Bruce nodded. "How long do you think your homework will take?" inquired the man as he closed the waiting room door behind them. The neat hallway was empty, and the pair's footsteps echoed loudly as they moved to the stairs. Wally followed in front, backpedaling to face them, his gaze fixated on Bruce's eyes.

Dick found it strange how Bruce, of all people, couldn't see the person right in front of him. But if Dick and Wally's theory was correct, there was no way that Bruce ever allowed his mind to become empty long enough to see a ghost. Dick supposed that there was at least one advantage to not paying attention in class and, even then, Dick didn't think that being able to see a ghost was an advantage. More like a clip from a horror film. A comedic horror, where Wally was involved. "A few hours if I take my time, an hour if I rush," Dick replied.

"I'll call you downstairs at 5, then," settled Bruce.

"Do I get to hang out with my friends?" Dick piped excitedly. Wally furrowed his eyebrows at the strangely normal conversation, but Dick knew that Wally would eventually understand what, exactly, he and Bruce were actually talking about.

"That, or you can stay home. I have a meeting to get to," Bruce said, a tap to his thigh showing Dick that he didn't mean just any other meeting.

"Score!" cheered Dick.

"What?" Wally butt in. Dick waved him off with his wrist, which Bruce looked at uncomprehendingly for a second. Dick shook his head to tell the man that he wasn't talking to him, but that seemed only to confuse Bruce more.

It took a while to get back to the manor, considering the traffic of downtown Gotham and the absurdly long drive it took in a non-upgraded vehicle to get up their driveway, but Dick was eventually running upstairs.

Wally was far, far behind him.

"I can't believe this place!" he practically squealed, already staring at Dick's reflection in every shiny object only because he couldn't stare at his own. "It's so...so…."

"Rich?" Dick supplied.

"Yeah!"

More time was wasted attempting to get Wally to calm down. By the amount of times that Wally went through expensive objects just getting to Dick's bedroom, though, Dick figured that maybe there was a good side to not being solid. At least Wally wouldn't break every antique Alfred spent his day fawning over. Unfortunately, after Wally had recovered enough to speak a sentence that didn't comment on the way the manor looked, the redhead went straight into obsessing over the sheer amount of video games in Dick's possession.

"You have to play all of them," the redhead demanded. "Right now. Just for me."

To Wally's loud disappointment, Dick didn't do as he asked. In fact, Dick didn't so much as look at the video games. Instead, the acrobat immediately sat down behind his great wooden desk and yanked his binder from his backpack.

"Homework?" the redhead protested. "Now? Can't you do that later?"

Dick shook his head. "Batman and Robin have to go to the mountain later. It's the weekend, I'll play some tonight."

"How do you know that you guys are going to the mountain?" Wally asked, confused. "Batman never said that."

"Yeah, he did. At the therapist's," replied Dick with a smirk.

"What? No, I was right there!"

At least Dick knew that Batman's paranoia was working.

"Master Dick?" There was a knock on Dick's bedroom door and the acrobat froze up for a second, glancing at Wally with intentions of hiding the boy. He could have hit himself after he had that moment of thought, though. How did someone hide a ghost?

It brought a new meaning to the phrase 'hiding in plain sight'. "Come in," Dick called.

"'Master Dick'?" Wally snorted.

Alfred appeared at the door with a tray of lasagna and orange juice. Dick tried not to draw attention to the fact that he was amused when Wally eyeballed the plate. "I've brought dinner," the elderly man stated.

Dick paused in his search for a sharpened pencil. "Dinner? It's only four," he questioned.

"Four-fifteen. I would have waited until the usual time, but Master Bruce is rather adamant that he get to the meeting before then," the butler sighed. "I wish he wouldn't do that. Especially not with you. As far as I'm concerned, you are perfectly capable to join him after dinner at six."

Dick grinned apologetically, offering a shrug in response. He quickly cleared away a portion of his desk so that Alfred was able to set down the tray of food. "Thanks," he answered. "I didn't realise how hungry I was."

"You never do," replied Alfred. "You're due down at five on the dot, but I'll see if I can't persuade Master Bruce into giving you some more time for your work. I say education is more important than odd nightly activities."

"Sounds good," Dick agreed. Alfred nodded once before closing the door behind him.

"You have a butler?" asked Wally. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Alfred's less like my butler and more like my grandfather," the acrobat admitted. "And he's a lot easier to talk to than Bruce. I mean, about emotions and stuff. Advice. The only advice you should go to Bruce for is how far away to stay from the Joker."

"And how far is that?" Wally humoured.

"There isn't a distance far enough," quipped Dick.

"And yet, he lets you go out in spandex to throw bird shaped ninja stars at him on a regular basis." Wally replied, rubbing his chin.

Dick only rolled his eyes and waved him off, gesturing animatedly to his homework. To drive his point across, the performer made a show of finding his headphones and placing them over his ears. Wally left to explore the rest of the manor in a huff. He only returned once to bother Dick, yelling about how scary the manor was, until Dick reminded Wally that he was a ghost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still slow, but it'll pay off, I promise!
> 
> Loved the comments, by the way. They were very encouraging. c: Thank you!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick and Wally go to the mountain, and Wally is shocked at what he finds. Meanwhile, Bruce catches a wind of suspicion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for posting a day late! I updated FF.net first, which I did yesterday, but I've been sick and exhausted and basically just passed out after that.
> 
> Note: There's a reason that I keep switching between real names (informal) and superhero names (formal). For everyone other than Bruce and Dick, calling someone by their superhero name means that they don't know what their real name is. So if I'm in Wally's POV and it refers to 'Batman', it means that Wally doesn't know that Batman's real name is Bruce. For Bruce, if the situation feels formal and official, they're called by their superhero names. Remember, he and Dick know all of the secret identities of the league. If Bruce switches to 'Barry' from 'Flash', it means that the situation became informal and personal. Same goes for Dick. The only name that doesn't apply in that rule for Bruce is Dick, and vice versa.
> 
> I hope you enjoy the read, and remember to leave me a penny of your thoughts before you go!

Wally followed Dick to the mountain expecting to find everyone scattered around the living room and kitchen, jesting as they always did. What he found was silence.

"Hello?" Dick called loudly, and Wally winced as the boy's voice bounced throughout the empty space. There was the swift click of footsteps before a blonde head poked out from the kitchen.

"In here, Robin," Artemis said blandly. Dick quickly followed her into the other room. There was an assortment of lettuce, mayonnaise, tomato, and bread sprawled over the counters.

"Binge eating much?" inquired Dick, and Artemis looked startled, pausing as she spread mayonnaise over a slice of bread. Dick tilted his head. "What?"

Artemis just shrugged. "Nothing, you just haven't joked around in a...while," she admitted, before giving a hesitant smile. "It's nice. Are you having a nice day?"

"Did I just hear blondie ask that?" Wally gawked from behind Dick.

Dick ignored the redhead. "Great, actually," he said cheerily as he hopped onto the counter beside the archer, kicking his legs. "I haven't seen you in forever. Where've you been?"

Artemis hummed noncommittally, slapping her covered bread on top of the tomato, turkey, and lettuce occupying the other slice. She leaned back against the counter, facing the fridge instead of her teammate. "I was taking some time off. Focusing on school and whatnot. What about you?"

She wasn't. Wally knew that because she happened to go to Dick's school. In fact, she rarely showed up for class at all. But neither of them could point that out. "You could say the same. Batman's been driving me up a wall," Dick replied. He stole a glance back at Wally, who kept trying to reach for Artemis' sandwich. She took a bite out of it and Wally recoiled in disappointment. "What about the others?"

Wally frowned at Dick. "We're a team, shouldn't we always stick together?"

"M'gann and SB still live here, though they aren't here right now," Artemis replied. "I've tried talking to M'gann before, but I think she can only really stand to be around SB because, y'know, he doesn't really understand that Wally's gone. I mean, I think he gets it but doesn't know how to express it. It's less overwhelming for her, y'know?" She closed her eyes and sighed before continuing. "Kaldur started up training again in Atlantis."

Dick nodded. There was a beat of silence before he hopped off the counter and clapped his hands together. "Well, we'll just have to fix that," he declared.

Artemis' eyebrow immediately rose. "Fix what? The team? We're still on suspension."

"Suspension?" Wally echoed.

Dick looked straight at Wally, who was hovering behind Artemis, when he replied. "Suspension because the team's still broken up about KF." Wally flinched.

Artemis nodded agreeably. "Yeah, that."

"Can we have just one conversation today that doesn't involve my death?" Wally grimaced. "I feel like I ruined everyone's lives."

Dick, unsurprisingly, didn't answer. Instead, he turned his attention to the open refrigerator, automatically scanning his eyes over the presented foods as if they were second nature. As Wally observed, though, the full stock of food seemed to throw him off, and he shut it with a wince. "And no, not the team. The team isn't over, remember? But we're sure going to fix our friendships. We're still buds, and buds don't forget about each other for two months," exclaimed Dick.

"Didn't bother you before," muttered Artemis. Wally wasn't sure whether or not Dick had heard, he didn't act like he did, but the redhead felt angry at the blonde's words. He kind of wished that he hadn't spent so much time trying to get the attention of Barry and Iris when he first became a ghost and instead thought to hang around his friends a bit. It made him feel guilty. He had thought about them, of course, but he selfishly hadn't wanted to see their banter go on without him.

He shouldn't have worried. It hadn't.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Dick asked as he closed the refrigerator and leaned up against it. Artemis stiffened.

In the end, the girl only sighed and deflated again. "It doesn't feel like just two months since I was last here. GA had a meeting at the Watchtower, so I decided to catch up on my daily dose of nostalgia. You?"

"Batman's at that meeting," he shrugged. "I thought that someone would be here."

Artemis nodded, but said nothing more.

"Come on," Wally urged, hovering nervously behind Artemis. "Harpy, say something mean. Or rude. Or just insult my best bro over there. Something. Rob? Rob, tell her - us - one of your stupid puns. Just, something. Guys?" Dick bit his lip. "Guys?"

"I don't think-," Dick started automatically in response to Wally's plea, but Wally didn't believe that even Dick knew what he was going to say. Artemis didn't move, but her eyes flickered to her teammate. Dick took a deep breath. "I don't think Wally would like this."

Artemis froze up again, and it took her a few seconds to respond. "Like what?"

"This," Dick responded vaguely. A sigh. "Us. He wouldn't like what we've become."

The girl didn't have a rebuttal for that. Even if she did, though, Dick didn't give her the time to come up with one. He plastered a smile onto his face so quickly that anyone who didn't know better would never have guessed that he had just mentioned his dead best friend, Wally observed. Dick planted his palm on the counter and used it as leverage to smoothly land on the other side, racing for the couch.

"Robin?" Artemis called, bewildered. She put the remains of her sandwich down. Dick had opened up the cabinet beneath the television and was rifling through its contents, throwing most of it over his shoulder. She looked at the covers of various movie discs as she approached. Wally watched them from afar.

"Lion King, Princess Diary, Bruce Almighty, Twilight, Fast and Furious, Skyfall...aha!" Artemis cocked a hip and crossed her arms as she waited for Dick to reveal what it was that he had found. He turned to her with a brilliant smile. "21 Jump Street!"

"You think 21 Jump Street is better than Lion King?" Artemis asked incredulously.

"I think 21 Jump Street is funnier than Lion King. And I like funny," Dick exclaimed as he popped the disc into the television without waiting for Artemis' consent and bounced backwards onto the couch.

"Whatever," the blonde said with a scowl, walking back into the kitchen. Wally watched as she reached to grab the popcorn, just as Wally used to do before movies, before thinking better of it and heading back to the couch. The redhead was left to stare at the half opened and abandoned cabinet, wanting with all his willpower just to open a package of popcorn and give it to his friends. Artemis sat down on the other side of the couch, leaving a space between her and Dick.

Both teammates had already seen the movie before, and Artemis wasn't expecting to enjoy it all. Wally could tell that much. She didn't even attempt to appear the least bit interested. But then again, she probably hadn't been expecting Dick to burst out cackling and giggling at comments that she probably didn't even find funny. Against all odds, Wally realised that she was smiling only ten minutes into the movie, and laughing by the twenty minute mark.

Around that time was when the zeta tube announced the arrival of two missing faces. M'gann inched into the room cautiously, her bounce gone and Wally felt that it was as if it were replaced with a guarded mind in a vain attempt to protect herself from an onslaught of emotions when she saw Dick, prepared as she was most likely for the grief that had consumed him for so long. Her walls dropped five minutes after staring at her teammate kicking his legs and claiming how much better of a detective he was than the people she saw on the screen. Connor looked mildly alarmed and somewhat disturbed, walking to the back of the couch and propping his elbows on it, focusing his attention on the movie to see what all the fuss was about.

M'gann, with the grace of everything that Wally hadn't seen in months, skipped gleefully to join them. Wally figured that Dick must have known exactly how M'gann was going to react, and he gave the girl a sideways glance with the smallest smile. It was then that Wally realised Dick was barely giving the movie any of his actual attention.

Even Barry and Dinah joined them, but when he saw Flash, Wally felt something drop heavily in his chest. He left for the kitchen. The two mentors, like Wally, were also quick to leave but, unlike Wally, they left in much higher spirits than when they had entered.

* * *

"Black Canary," Bruce called the moment that he had stepped into the Watchtower. The meeting had already ended, and he was there to grab some last minute files that Green Arrow had failed to mention until the man had been about to leave, before deciding that it was also an ideal time to pitch forward certain concerns of his.

Bruce itched to get back. He was more than well aware that Dick could handle himself in a mountain filled with his friends, but it was already nine at night and the two still had to patrol Gotham. At the rate they were going, Dick was going to have to start saying that he was insomniatic to the teachers who kept asking about his lack of sleep.

"Yes, Batman?" Black Canary asked from the computer that she was rooted behind. She quickly kicked her legs so that the chair swivelled to face the just arriving man. She was holding a packet of files in her arms. "If it's about these, Oliver meant to give them to you," she said. Bruce nodded as he took them from her grasp.

"I've been meaning to ask you something," he started just as she moved to turn back around. The woman in black paused and glanced at her teammate.

"Oh?" she inquired curiously.

"Has Robin come to you with anything?" Bruce asked. The blonde woman in front of him frowned and gave him her full attention, folding her hands in her lap.

"You mean comfort? Therapy?" she clarified. At Bruce's confirmation, she continued, frown deeper than ever. "I can't tell you anything about the sessions I have with the team. You know that. But no, he hasn't asked for a room. Why?"

Bruce sighed softly, running a palm down his face as his teammate looked on in concern. He couldn't understand the way that Black Canary helped people. She listened to them in ways that Bruce didn't think he ever could. It was debatable who loved human life more, of course, and Bruce had hard morals that were permanently set in stone, but that was all physical. When it got down to the emotionally relatable level, it was safe to say that Black Canary had him beat. "He's been acting strange," he admitted.

That made the blonde confused. "'Strange'?" she echoed. "You mean happy?"

There was an element to her voice that Bruce couldn't place. "Yes, he's happy, but it doesn't make any sense. I feel like there's something off," he elaborated.

Black Canary considered her options for a moment before responding. "Maybe he's finally come to peace with the situation? I know it might seem a little random, but that could be because we were just used to him being so... depressed," she said carefully. Bruce could hear what she didn't say, and it made him want to look over his life from another perspective. Not to change it, but to acknowledge how other people viewed him. That was what Black Canary did to people. She made them think. Not about cases and not about missions, but about themselves. Bruce knew, in between her sentences, she was telling him that just because Bruce hadn't taken loss in the 'right way' didn't mean that his partner would turn out the same. They were not the same. Bruce knew that. But it was still a hard thing to remember when the only lessons he had left to teach Dick would turn Dick into his clone.

Bruce scowled. "So you don't feel like there's anything weird going on?" he demanded. Black Canary sighed.

"Let him be happy, Batman. I know it isn't like you to just leave things be, but don't do something that you're going to regret," she warned. There it was again. That something to her voice which Bruce couldn't pinpoint.

"My instincts haven't failed me yet," he growled, clutching the files in his hands as he spun around. His cape fluttered against his thigh as he began swiftly walking back to the zeta tube.

"Batman," Black Canary called as Bruce began typing Mount Justices' coordinates into the machine. "If you're right, and something is up..."-Bruce paused in interest-"maybe it's for the best. He's happy. Robin hasn't been this happy in a long time. Whatever it is that's making him this way - don't ruin it."

That's where their morals in human life were different. Black Canary relied on happiness in life. Bruce, on the other hand, already lived in the darkness. His comfort was the truth.

But did Robin need the same darkness as Bruce had in his life?

Bruce thought about that as he stood under the zeta beam and the light whisked him away. He was staring at Mount Justice's living room not seconds later. In it was Dick, bending backwards over the couch in order to make funny faces at Artemis as she tried focusing on the math textbook propped on her knee.

No, probably not.

But Batman still had morals, and those morals were permanently set in stone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick and Bruce are suspicious of one another while Wally begins to feel out-of-sorts.

Dick couldn't help it. No matter where he went, no matter what he did, the smile refused to drop from his face. He had always wanted to spend the day with his best friend, and if he ignored the circumstances in which brought that day, it was almost like a dream come true.

Almost.

Still, he refused to frown. There were reasons to frown, as there always were, but he wasn't about to compromise the time he had to smile just so he could live as he usually did.

It had been a week since Wally had moved into the Wayne manor (without anyone but the ward's permission), and it had been a week filled with mornings just like the one that Dick had been living that day. Or, the beginning of the morning that Dick had been living that day.

"Hey, Bruce!" Dick called as he slid down the winding stair railing. Neither Alfred nor Bruce so much as blinked, Alfred placing the last breakfast tray of bacon on the table and Bruce gingerly sipping his coffee. Dick jumped into his seat, bouncing around in place just for good measure, as if the two (three) other men in the room couldn't recognise that Dick was happy. "What'cha drinkin'?" That was a dumb question. Coffee. Dick already knew that. But he felt as if something had to be said in the oncoming silence.

"Coffee," Bruce replied blandly.

"Boring," Dick claimed. "Drink something fancy. Like tea. Want some tea? Alfred, Bruce would love it if you made him some tea."

"No, Bruce would not," said Bruce.

"He talks in third person outside of costume, too?" Wally exclaimed, causing Dick to choke on the orange juice that he had started to indignantly sip.

"Are you alright, sir?" Alfred asked, eyeing the spilt juice with suspicion. Coughing lightly, Dick giggled and waved his palm.

"Yeah, I'm good," he assured, quickly reaching for the bacon and eating it straight from the tray without bothering to take it to his plate first. "Anything special going on at big, bad ol' Wayne Enterprises?"

"No."

"Really? Then that means you should stay home! Kick back, relax, watch Cartoon Network, yell at Fox News, book a vacation to Romania, all that fun stuff," insisted the acrobat.

"No."

"Maybe they have vampires in Romania. That'll be fun. And there's probably some sort of kidsy Flash shrine airing on CNN, you sure you wanna miss that?"

"No."

"Great, lets go watch!"

"Dick."

"Yeah, I'm a dick, tell me something I don't know," Dick quipped instantly.

"The fact that there's no Flash shrine on CNN?" Wally suggested from his position at the other end of the table. He had been boredly tracing his finger through the air, over curling designs in the wood. "I should know. I checked all the time when I was younger."

"Details," whispered Dick.

"Only details," snorted Wally.

Bruce eyed him with scrutiny, not saying anything for a moment, and Dick was tempted to shift under the man's overbearing gaze. Even Wally's face twisted into something uncomfortable, despite the fact that the man couldn't see him.

Then, he said something that neither Wally nor Dick had ever expected him to say.

"Are you okay?"

Dick's eyes widened as his surprise caused him to slump back into his seat. Even Alfred faltered for a moment as he poured Bruce a new cup of coffee. The acrobat cleared his throat, afraid that he'd croak. "Uh, yeah," he responded, disappointed that his voice didn't even attempt to hide his bewilderment. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Why would you be?" Bruce pressed.

Dick took a moment to digest that sentence before his hand curled into a fist. "What?" he asked, a tinge of hostility leaking into his tone. Not even Dick thought that he'd respond with so much emotion, so much defensive emotion, but he was and he hated how it was probably proving Bruce's point right, whatever that point was. "Am I not allowed to be happy in this manor of death and despair?"

"Excuse my intrusion," Alfred's smooth, accented words drifted over from where he was standing, "but I do believe that Master Bruce is simply curious as to what has made you so happy."

"Maybe I'm just a happy person," Dick snapped. Why was he acting that way? Not even he knew. He had been feeling as if he could fly not minutes before. "Unlike you." No, he needed to stop right there. "You, who doesn't seem like he's even capable of any emotion but revenge and hate." He was going to go too far. He knew that. So why didn't he want to stop?

Bruce, for once, looked taken aback.

Dick abruptly shoved back his chair. "Just because you can't get over yourself and see what's out there doesn't mean that I have to be the same way. I'm not like you. I know how to forgive and move on." Did he? Did he really? Did he forgive Anthony Zucco, the man who had murdered his parents? Did he forgive himself for not warning them, for letting them die?

Had he moved on at all?

He wasn't sad any longer over Wally's death, but that was only because Wally was standing right beside him. Wally wasn't gone.

Bruce didn't say a word in protest when Dick swiveled around and stormed from the room, his footsteps falling heavily in the large echo of the manor. He was hit with the direct sunlight coming from the high windows in the main hall, and he blinked rapidly to adjust to its bright glare. Dick paused, angrily gripping the railing of the winding staircase and hanging his head, sucking in a deep breath.

His heart hurt.

When Wally joined him, it was as if he could feel his presence. Though no sound of footsteps accompanied the redhead, there was an air of watchfulness and a silence that Dick didn't think had followed him before.

"I never argued with my parents," Dick whispered.

It didn't seem that Wally knew how to respond to that. "You were nine," he said instead. "Nine year olds don't usually argue with their parents. Especially not about things like this."

Dick shook his head, but he offered no words to go with his physical protests. Instead, he started up the stairs, his feet dragging just a bit more than before, his eyes trained on the wood. "I miss them," he breathed to his friend. "Want to know why?" He didn't wait for an answer. "They asked me if I was okay when I was sad. Not when I was happy."

Wally was about to open his mouth, though he really didn't know what he was going to say, when a new thought happened to occur to Dick. The acrobat quickly began jumping two steps at a time, racing for his room and throwing the door open. He grabbed his sunglasses and hoodie, pausing only for a split second to stare at them. "You know, I always tried to replace my parents. Put Bruce there instead. It was easier, even if it was wrong. Even if I knew he never could." Dick shoved the glasses onto his face and yanked his arms through the hoodie. "But Bruce can't be my father. He can't even be a father. He can't give happiness when he has no happiness to give. If I want that, I have to get it for myself."

Wally followed as Dick threw open the window and dug a rope out from under his bed. The redhead didn't question the existence of the rope, either, as the living boy tied it to a conveniently placed hook in the ceiling and tossed it outside. He was on the ground, through the garage, and racing down the driveway on his R-Cycle in minutes. Seconds later and he was gone, the redhead in his company having been left behind at the front door.

Wally didn't have superspeed as a ghost. Superspeed was something that had happened to his physical body, and he was no longer in his physical body. His ghost was, essentially, his soul. Just like how when diseased people became ghosts and they no longer suffered from their disease, Wally no longer had his powers. He supposed that Dick forgot to ask, though.

That was the thing. Dick was probably already in the city by then, off to do God knew what. Get to Mount Justice? Probably. Probably to hang out with whatever living friends of his that he could find so that he could forget the drama that had happened at home. Because he could do that. He could sneak into a club if he wanted. He could do some damage, do some good, do anything that he wanted. Whatever he did, it made an effect on the outside world. People would notice. People would remember.

Wally couldn't do any of that. He had no effect. He had no purpose.

He couldn't do anything that made him happy.

He supposed that Dick forgot to ask about that, too.

* * *

When Dick walked into the mountain, the training arena was already set up with Dinah and Superboy dancing on the stage. Not literally, because Dick thought that he would have a heart attack if he ever saw Superboy actually dance, but it looked like Dinah might as well have been doing just that. She probably felt like she was training a Kindergartener and, despite the living weapon spiel, she pretty much was.

"I said to channel your anger, not to increase it," the woman instructed as she dodged another uncoordinated charge from her roaring opponent. "And you're going to waste a lot of energy yelling like that."

"You're just a regular human," Superboy spat. "I can still beat you!"

"Then why haven't you?" Dinah challenged as Dick finally stepped into the light, turning to lean against the wall with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face. The heroine sidestepped Superboy again as she glanced at the youngest of the Bat family. "Hello, Robin," she greeted with a smile before turning her attention back to the fight, not that Dick doubted her attention had ever left. She balanced her weight into a light fighting stance, then grabbed Superboy's arm as he barrelled past and used his weight displacement to her advantage as she spun around and sent him crashing onto his chest. She stepped off the platform as the match shut down, only to pause and stare at Dick.

Dick was sick of getting stared at.

"Are you alright?" she asked. Dick was also sick of being asked that. Superboy opened his mouth to say something, but only grunted when he saw Dick and stormed away in favour of the couch.

Dick's smirk dropped. "Not entirely," he admitted. Dinah's eyebrows shot up and she changed her path in order to stand in front of him. She turned and leaned up against the wall beside the acrobat.

"And why is that?" asked the woman.

Dick sighed and ran his fingers through his bangs. "Just Batman," he said, before grimacing at the fact that he was even talking about his personal life at all. He decided to turn it down a notch when he continued. "He's been getting into my business more than usual."

Despite him not having said much, Dinah looked like she understood. Dick had to say that that quality of hers was probably why he admired her so much. "He is, is he? I told that man to leave you be," she scowled. Or, scowled as much as someone like Dinah could.

"Really?" Dick frowned. "What did you guys talk about?"

Dinah hesitated. It was clear that she wasn't willing to get in between the two of them, but it wasn't like she was spreading false information. If anything, she was helping each of them learn both sides of their stories. She leaned into Dick, glancing around the room, and Dick tallied that as another reason why he admired her. She kept privacy private. "Is there a reason for this sudden change of...heart?" she asked. "I mean, from overcoming your grief so quickly? I don't care what it is so long as it makes you healthy and happy, but Batman is...well," she sighed. "Batman is really something."

What should Dick actually tell her? How much could he reveal about Wally?

Where was Wally?

With a jolt, Dick pushed off of the wall and examined the room, Dinah thankfully remaining silent. No matter how hard Dick thought, though, he didn't think that he had seen Wally follow him to the mountain. "Sorry," he apologised. "I have to go."

"Go where?" Dinah asked immediately. "You just got here, and we have training."

"A friend," Dick said, anxiety gnawing at his gut. "I forgot to call a friend. I'll be back later. Is it okay if I miss part of training today?" he pleaded.

Dinah looked as if she were thinking about it but, if Dick were honest, she wasn't very convincing. She had already made up her mind the moment that Dick had asked to leave. "Yes," she agreed. "But at least tell Batman where you're going." Dick nodded, hardly bothering to even hear her words as he rushed out of the room.

Alone in the training arena, Dinah ran a hand down her face and sighed. "And at least make up a better excuse next time," she muttered.

Racing down the back hallway that led to the main garage doors of the cave, Dick cursed himself. He had gotten on his motorcycle and gone to the nearest zeta tube in Gotham that hadn't been the one in the Batcave, considering that Bruce would have been in the Batcave too if he wasn't headed for Wayne Enterprises, without even paying attention to Wally. Wally had proved the other day that ghosts could go through zeta tubes, but Dick didn't think that they could necessarily ride motorcycles.

A rush of air went past his ear once, then again a second later. "Robin!" Barry said, practically materialising in front of Dick. "Hi!"

"Uh, hi," Dick greeted, distracted. "Sorry, I'm kind of in a rush," he said.

"Oh!" Barry exclaimed apologetically. "Want me to give you a lift? Where are you off to?"

"No, it's okay," reassured the acrobat, internally aching to leave. Barry, though usually as oblivious to social cues as the next speedster, actually seemed to take the hint.

"Aw, okay," he said. "But if you ever need me, you can call, alright? Oh, and before you leave," he continued just as Dick began bouncing on the balls of his feet, "Batman was looking for you."

Dick nodded but, once more, hardly listened, already shooting off again for the mountain's exit. Thankfully, by the time Barry had disappeared, he really didn't have to go far as a blob of red hair floated casually through the door that separated the hall from the garage. "Dick!" Wally exclaimed, and Dick thought that he was about to start getting tired of speedster enthusiasm. "Did you know that I can't go through any natural raw materials? I just tried going through the stone of the mountain and hit my head."

"Wally," Dick breathed. He didn't say anything more, only grinned as Wally rambled about how unfair it was that he couldn't go through the stone of the mountain even when he was transparent. In fact, Wally literally didn't stop to breathe, probably because he didn't need to, and if Wally had been alive then Dick would have remembered that speedsters tended to do that in order to drown out their own thoughts. But Wally wasn't alive. Therefore, Dick wasn't really thinking about that as they walked away.

Bruce was, though. Well, about Wally in general, really.

Bruce knew that Dick had gone to the mountain. Where else would he have gone on a Saturday morning? The only other friend that Dick had was Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Gordon's daughter, but he wouldn't have taken the R-Cycle if he had been headed there. Plus, the girl hadn't told Dick where she lived, and as much as Bruce hadn't exactly taught Dick about how to pick up ladies, Bruce figured that the boy was competent enough with people to know that conveniently knowing their address wasn't a good place to start.

Not to mention that Black Canary had scheduled a group training session that day. That was where he had been headed until he had run into Flash, who had zoomed past him once before turning around and running straight back. "Batman!" the speedster had exclaimed. "Do we have any missions for the kiddies today? Can I brief them?"

"No," Bruce had said lowly, making sure to adjust his voice. Sometimes, the low growl really was annoying. If he were honest, it was probably why he didn't speak as much as he did outside of costume. Low growls tended to hurt quite a bit after a while.

"Aw man," Flash had groaned. "What about later? Can I brief them later?"

"No," repeated Bruce.

"I really think they should go on an actual fighting mission for once, though," Flash had continued. "I mean, they always screw up covert, anyway."

That wasn't true, and Bruce had wanted to say that, but as much as he liked the truth, he valued his teammate's mental health more. How could he carry out a mission with a wounded soldier? Bruce didn't care for how emotionally vulnerable the Allen and West families were, but it wasn't his place to train them. He'd just have to deal with it.

Because since Wally had gone, covert missions had actually gone according to schedule. But, in Flash's mind, in Barry's mind, Wally was simply 'absent', and the team was how it had always been.

The team wasn't emotionally damaged. The team wasn't distant. The team wasn't so unmotivated that they responded to orders without banter, because it wasn't as if an entire key part of their conversation was missing. That was Barry's mindset.

Barry refused to move on.

In a weird, twisted sort of way, the man that was antithesis to everything Batman was reminded Bruce of himself. That caused Dick's previous words to come back to mind, and he fought a grimace.

"No," he had said again, moving to go around the man.

"Jeez, Bats, you're no fun. You've got to let them have the spotlight at some point. What are you doing here, anyway? Briefing isn't for a few hours," Flash had resigned, hands on his waist as he spaced his feet apart, as if he could make himself into a wall large enough to prevent the Batman from pushing past.

Bruce had decided to be honest, because if Flash could do anything, it was to physically find someone in a short amount of time. "Robin," he said monotonously, glancing pointedly over the man's shoulder to show that he desired to continue his search for said boy.

Flash had looked like he wanted to prod for more information, but who he was talking to must have finally occurred to him, because he went back to beaming bright and clear. "I'll let him know if I see him, then," he said, before waving and running off too fast for his 'See ya!' to be heard until he was already gone.

Bruce hadn't even tried saying that he didn't necessarily want Dick to know that he was looking for him. Even if he could catch up with the speedster, though, it only took a few seconds for Bruce to know that Flash had already done the deed.

That was because he actually heard the man tell Dick that he was being searched for. Surprised, Bruce instinctively glued himself to the wall behind the corner of the hall where the voices of Flash and Dick were drifting from. He didn't hear Flash for long, though, and Dick didn't talk much until a gust of wind from Flash's running steps ruffled Bruce's cape.

He was about to reveal himself, though he wasn't particularly great with words when it got down to serious conversations between him and his partner, when something made him stop.

That something happened to be the one name that Bruce had unintentionally blamed as the source of his problems.

"Wally," Dick said quietly from behind the corner, and Bruce watched as the boy's shadow against the opposite wall got smaller and smaller as his footsteps drew further and further away.

It was likely that Dick happened to think of Wally after seeing Flash, but after his strange change of moods and everything that had happened...

Well, Bruce didn't believe in coincidences.

There could have been only one explanation. But he thought that he had better check back with Black Canary later, if only to tell her that Dick wouldn't be going to training for a while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bruce, Bruce, what on Earth are you up to?
> 
> And that concludes (what I believe is) our final set-up chapter! A penny for your thoughts?
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI. Yeah. Uh. So. I may or may not have completely forgotten about the fact that I started posting this on AO3. I thought I was only posting this fic to FF, so I only updated last week on FF.
> 
> Therefore, here, have a Wednesday chapter! I'm really sorry for forgetting about Friday's update. The next chapter will still be this Friday.
> 
> NOTE: There's a flashback in this, and it's inserted in the middle of what's present-day, before melting again into present day. I don't italicise or bold or such and such for flashbacks. It's literally in the middle of a paragraph. So just keep on the look out for that and realise that after it explains present-day events, the rest of the chapter is occurring in present-day.

Wally knew that Barry Allen had forgotten about him. He knew it. He'd known it since he had died.

The man had returned to normal. All bright and sunshine, his and Aunt Iris' home, where Wally used to live and the place he'd haunted in his first few months as a ghost, was never silent. There was music if there was no talking, there was dancing if there was no singing, always with food on the plate and bright lights from the ceiling, even on the sunniest of days. Hell, exactly one month after Wally had died, and he knew because he had been counting on the calendar in the kitchen, Iris had taken Barry on a picnic.

Was that all that Wally had amounted to? Picnics, in the very field that he and Barry used to run at night in the early stages of his training as Kid Flash?

Wally knew that Barry had forgotten about him, and that was frightening.

Wally had never known that he had done it throughout his life, but a year after meeting Dick, the two of them ages 11 and 13, Dick had pointed it out. It was remarkable how immature Dick always acted and how observant he really could be. He had told Wally, after a night spent patrolling together with Roy and all three of their mentors, that maybe they could spend some-

"-more time together," Dick had stated, and Wally had felt a bit awkward, the younger boy grabbing onto his sleeve like that outside of the zeta tube connecting to the Batcave. Batman, Barry, Green Arrow, and Roy had already gone through, and Wally was to go next. Dick was last in order to attach some-shiny-device-or-another to the zeta tube that was supposed to allow him to recode, after he had gone through, the coordinates of the teleporter from the Batcave back to its original destination in Metropolis. "Just the two of us."

If that hadn't sounded suspicious coming from the prodigy of the World's-Greatest-Most-Paranoid-And-Busiest-Detective-In-The-World, Wally didn't know what did. "Uh, sure, man," he had answered uncomfortably. "I'm all for hanging out. But…why?"

It seemed to occur to Dick then how his words must have sounded, and he let go of Wally's sleeve with a cackle. "Because you're cool and all in a group, but I want to know what you're really like."

"What?" Wally had frowned. "I'm pretty sure you've got how I act down by now. Why should hanging out together make any difference?"

"Because then you won't keep trying to grab everyone's attention. It'll be only me, and there will be no one competing for my focus," answered Dick, as if Wally was totally supposed to know what that meant. Well, he didn't. Stupid birds. Dick must have noticed Wally's confusion, because he continued. "You're loud and silly so that you won't be forgotten, right?"

Wally had wanted to protest to that. Hearing it out loud was so much different from hearing it in his head. But there had been truth to Dick's words. There had been so much truth that Wally couldn't find it in himself to lie. He was a terrible liar, anyway. "I want to get to know the real you," Dick had said with a playful shove of Wally's shoulder. "And that means taking away all of the variables that get you acting like the class clown. It means making it so that you aren't always trying to be the centre of attention. You're not going to be forgotten, Wally. I'm pretty sure it's hard not to notice you, no matter how quiet you are."

Wally had to think hard about an answer to that statement. "Well, duh, you guys can't actually forget about me when I'm right there," he had reasoned. "I just…" Say it, Wally. Say it. Dick had already known everything just by guessing. What harm was there in a little more information? "I don't want to be ignored."

"No one does," Dick had shrugged, before offering a brilliant smile. "If you were ignored, I wouldn't be standing here. Now go away before we start a soap opera - Batman's gonna be pissed if we're late," he had said, shoving Wally under the zeta beam. Wally had appeared in the Batcave moments later and, after Dick had finally shown up, nothing more on the matter was ever said.

Still, Wally, for days afterward, had thought about what Dick had meant. Wally wasn't so naive as to think that no one in the world felt like Wally did, especially not about being ignored. But there was something there that Wally didn't believe Dick had understood. Something rooted deeply, so deeply that it stirred Wally's limbs into vibrating, kick started his heart into racing.

It probably could have been traced back to when Wally was younger, after his mother had walked out and before his father had been thrown into jail for drug abuse. Wally knew that he had gotten off good compared to the other kids in the situation that he was in. A kind CPS agent had said so, right after Rudolph West had been dragged off to rehab. He had an uncle and aunt close by, more than willing to take him in. He had never been physically hurt by his father, at least not badly or past normal, albeit a bit harsh, child discipline. There had never been physical, although somewhat mental, abuse in the West household. But Wally hadn't been much of a talker at that time, so he didn't blame that particular CPS agent for not considering an important factor.

Wally had never been abused. But he had always been neglected.

He hadn't wanted that to happen ever again. Especially not by Barry. As he was raised under Allen eyes, Wally could almost forget about that fear. At least, when he wasn't around Dick after Dick had given that short speech of his. Though a new personality had sprung from the ashes of his childhood in a vain attempt to ward away the possibility of his nightmares coming true, it was unintentional. He never truly feared being neglected by Barry or by Iris. He had been certain that he would never be ignored or forgotten again.

It took his death for Wally to find out that he had been wrong.

Even Dick forgot about him. Wally knew it. Dick didn't, but Wally did. When Wally first became visible to Dick, it was Wally that was the centre of Dick's world. Wally had never asked to be the centre of anything, he just didn't want to be so far in the distance that he wasn't seen. Still, once Wally gave Dick the happiness that Dick had lost, it wasn't uncommon for long periods of the day to go by where it was as if Wally didn't exist at all. That other day at the mountain with the team, for example. Once Artemis had sat down, all throughout the night, after the movie and during the jokes, it didn't look as if it had occurred to Dick that Wally was still around. That morning, Wally had been absent, testing to see if Dick would notice, and when he walked up to Dick in the late afternoon all that he got was a 'hi', as if Wally had been there the entire time.

After Dick had left Wally earlier that day on his R-Cycle, Wally had decided to take the zeta tube in the Batcave to the mountain because he had no clue where the one that Dick was headed for was located, but once he hopped beneath the beam, he had quickly figured out that not even zeta tubes knew that ghosts existed.

Fantastic, really. The last time that Wally had entered through a zeta tube was because Dick had been the one who had activated it, and Wally didn't think that Dick was getting back anytime soon to help his pal out.

He never knew that his hero would be Batman, of all people. No, Wally never knew that his hero would be Bruce Wayne. Gah, it was still weird to digest.

The man had just suddenly appeared. Wally figured it was from one of the many shady caverns that were more than abundant throughout the cave, but the redhead thought that Batman at least tried to be silent during missions. Nope, that was just how the man was. A bit freaky, in Wally's opinion. Batman would be a better suited assassin than crime fighter.

He had never taken the time to really get to know Batman. Hell, Wally had never taken the time to really look at Batman. He was always too intimidated by the towering man. Though Wally still got the nerves, despite the fact that he was on a different physical plane than the billionaire, he could credit himself with having more confidence around him than before. Enough confidence to stride up to the man and take a look at the papers that he was looking at.

Or, lack thereof.

The file on top of the desk where Bruce had sat down wasn't opened. In fact, Bruce wasn't even touching it. His elbows were on either side of the manila folder and one hand was tightly gripping his bangs away from his face. Startling Wally almost to the other side of the room, he suddenly groaned and slammed his hands down, shaking the desktop nestled a foot away. Bruce spun around and grabbed his costume, beginning to change as Wally forcefully trained his gaze on said computer.

The former speedster had never thought that he would ever get into Bruce Wayne's breathing space, let alone potentially watch the man strip. It felt like things were getting more freaky when he was dead than when he had been alive, and that was saying a lot.

Wally knew that Bruce was done when he spoke. "Batcomputer, deactivate lights," he commanded as the redhead turned around. The cave went dim, and Wally was still recovering from hearing the Batsuit speak in something other than a Clint Eastwood imitation when the man in question headed towards the zeta tube.

If that wasn't Wally's chance, nothing was. He had darted forward and stood uncomfortably close to Bruce's chest as the door of the phone booth was sealed shut and the light whisked the both of them away.

After having heard Bruce mention to Barry that he had been looking for Dick, Wally thought that he had a good idea as to why the man had groaned in the cave. In fact, that was what he had been trying to tell Dick when he had finally found the boy, but fate was no longer giving him the chance. The moment that the pair had stepped into the training arena, Black Canary (that amazing woman with her amazing body, wow, did Wally miss training with that, she made even his ass getting kicked look beautiful) wasted no time in directing the team into fighting groups. The first to go up was Dick, and Wally wasn't about to break Dick's concentration.

When Dick finally stepped back down after his spar with Artemis, however, was when Bruce decided to walk in, causing Dick to beeline to his room. That, in turn, made Wally feel that he had best keep his mouth shut about anything involving Dick's somewhat-adoptive father.

Instead, a new idea had taken root in his mind. An idea that had shoved Bruce's suspicious behaviour to the sidelines and was just itching at Wally's mouth, begging to be voiced. He eyed Dick as his best friend sat down on the covers of his bed, legs crossed, bangs gripped tightly over his forehead.

Wally didn't point out how similar the gesture was to Bruce.

He could feel his voice at the back of his throat and his lips already shaping the request. All he had to do was ask it. How hard could that be? Very hard, apparently. But the silence in the room was oppressive, and Wally wanted to do something. He wanted to move. He needed to take some sort of action.

"Sit down," Dick said. His voice sounded hoarse. Wally frowned.

"I can't. I go through furniture." Dick didn't answer, and Wally took a deep breath in an attempt to better force the words from his throat.

Come on.

It wasn't as if he were asking Dick to shoot Klarion's cat, god dammit.

"Can you tell Barry that I'm a ghost?" If Wally had still had superspeed, he thought that he probably would have rushed those words out too fast for Dick to hear. Thankfully, he didn't need to repeat them.

Dick looked at him as if he were insane. Maybe he was. "He wouldn't believe me," the acrobat deadpanned. "Would you, if Barry was a ghost?"

"Please," Wally begged, feeling as if his throat were constricting with something suspicious. "Just...try. All he needs to do is empty his mind to see me, right? To hear me? Just tell him to do that and I'll do the rest."

"It won't work," protested Dick. "I can't-"

"You can!" Wally exclaimed. His throat burned. "Dick, please. I can't, but if you can single-handedly throw the Joker into Arkham, you can convince-"

"I know you miss him," Dick interrupted. "I miss my parents too, Wally. But you have to-"

Wally narrowed his eyes. "It's not like that," he corrected.

"Then what is it like?" challenged the acrobat.

"I want him to feel guilty," Wally spat, and Dick's eyes widened in surprise. "He forgot about me, Dick!" the redhead said as his voice rose. He tried to keep it down, he really did, but then he realised that no one could hear him anyway. No matter how loudly he screamed, no one would ever hear him.

He didn't exist.

"He just forgot. Everything. The crimes we stopped together, raising me, taking me in after my dad went to prison, and then he doesn't even grieve when I die. He practically spits on my grave! He makes a point to go to every place that means something to me and laugh! He doesn't care about me. He never did!" the redhead shouted.

"So you want him to mourn for the rest of his life, do you?" Dick shouted back as Wally's hands curled into fists. God, was it frustrating, not even being able to hit something when he was mad. "You want him to cry himself to sleep every night? Because believe me, if he's anything like I was, he does. How can you be so stupid?"

Stupid. Right. Because that was all that Wally was. Stupid enough to get himself exploded before his high school diploma. He felt the tears stream down his face as he screamed into his fists. It was so unfair.

Was justice even real? Or were heroes only doomed to suffer in place of all the suffering that they stopped?

"I don't believe it," Wally mumbled tearfully.

"Then you're only making yourself suffer for something that isn't even true. How could you do that to yourself? To Barry's memory?" Dick demanded.

"You're acting like Barry's the one who died!"

"And what if he was?" asked Dick. Wally fell silent. "Your mother left you. Your father got what he deserved. They never really cared about you and you know it. You didn't grieve for them, don't pretend you did, you only grieved for yourself. And you should have. Hell, you should have grieved more. You should have kicked and screamed until they got the worst punishment possible for not giving you the childhood that you deserved. But Wally, they weren't the loving, caring parents that died in your average depressing backstory. You weren't the living one who thought that he'd lost the people he'd spent his life with. You're not the one alive, with family who is dead. What do you know about how a person mourns for their kid?"

"I'm not Barry's kid," Wally croaked. Damn Dick. Damn Dick for knowing too much about him.

"Maybe not to you, but to Barry you are," Dick said, standing up. "You know what I did after my parents died? I became Robin. I busted the guy who murdered them. I fight crime in their memory. What do you know about how people honour a memory?" he panted. "Barry already fights crime. You two were the sunny duo. The ones who skipped in every day and ate everyone's food and laughed during serious missions and joked about the most terrifying of all villains. Why would Barry cry in your memory? Your memory is fun. Barry doesn't laugh at your memory, he laughs for it."

"Why do you think you know more than me about the guy I grew up with? About my mentor? My partner?" demanded the redhead. "You didn't see him! You haven't spent every waking moment with him for the past two months!"

"No, I haven't seen him," Dick sighed, slumping again. Wally's fists uncurled at the sudden lack of energy radiating from his best friend's side of the argument. "And honestly, I'm so done with all of this negativity. I can find happiness for just a little while, and what happens? Bruce thinks I'm insane and better off being depressed, and you're convinced on nothing that the man who watched you during every waking moment for way longer than just two months wants to spit on your grave. Is everyone out of their minds? Maybe I'm out of my mind." Wally could only watch as Dick curled his head close to his knees, clawing at the hairs on the back of his neck. "Maybe I'm just seeing things. Hell, maybe you're not even real."

"You know that's not true," squeaked Wally. He cleared his throat in an attempt to dislodge the knot that had yet to unravel. Wally didn't want Dick to continue that train of thought, to protest Wally's claim, but Wally preferred that to the silence Dick left him with instead.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnd I'm late again. But at least it wasn't a week this time?
> 
> This chapter is...a bit of an emotional mess. But it's finally starting to develop, so I hope everyone enjoys despite it!
> 
> (Also, twice as long as normal. I mean, that's pretty cool.)

Dick didn't mention anything about the disastrous conversation from the mountain for days afterwards, and Wally didn't dare bring it up. Still, their relationship was tense, and the both of them knew that it wouldn't be too easy to ignore what words had been said and what had occurred. Wally, for his part, still wanted Barry to know that he was around, but for what he was unsure.

Did he still want Barry to feel guilty about abandoning him? But with all that time to mull over his thoughts, Wally didn't necessarily think that Barry had actually abandoned him anymore. Barry went to his nephew's grave once, but maybe Wally was just disappointed because he had been expecting more. He honestly didn't want Barry to cry or be upset. He never did. Yet, he wanted Barry to cry and be upset for  _him_ , because Wally would have done the same in return.

Maybe Dick was right. Maybe Barry really was just honouring Wally's memory, not wanting to be sad for the teenager's sake. And, in a way, Wally knew that it was for the best. He might have been in more pain seeing Barry mourn over and over again, slip into a depression, for the boy that was right there.

It took a few days of thinking for Wally to realise, no matter how much Wally didn't want his favourite person in the world to be depressed, why he longed for the recognition of sadness at Wally's death.

Barry's happiness made it seem as if Wally had never made an effect on Barry's life. Being an actual ghost was a nightmare, but knowing that he had been a ghost for as long as he had lived? That was unbearable.

And selfish. Wally felt insanely selfish. How could he ever have thought that way of his uncle? How much pain was that man really in? And Wally couldn't do anything to heal that pain. He could do nothing but stand and watch the man go about his life, believing that Wally really was gone, not knowing that Wally still was with him.

Amidst all his thoughts of Barry, Wally discovered an important function in being a ghost. Because he had no superspeed, he could never go places very fast. In fact, finding Dick from Barry's house was only because he had followed Barry to the Watchtower, followed Batman to the Batcave, and finally followed Dick to school. However, if he thought about the place that he wanted to go hard enough, if he had enough longing to go there, sometimes he actually did. The first time it had happened, Wally had freaked Dick out by disappearing in the middle of the acrobat's rant about the American education system, but it was a pretty neat trick once he got the hang of it. At least being a ghost had some benefits.

He used the skill to switch back and forth between Barry and Dick's presences. He wanted to tell himself that he stayed with Dick most of the time, despite the often tense atmosphere, but he would be lying. He felt something obligatory in watching Barry. As if it were something that he were meant to do. Though he was mostly with Dick during the daytime, when Dick got the brief amounts of sleep that he did, Wally wasted no time in switching over to the Allen household.

Sometimes, all that happened was Wally watching Barry sleep. Other times, Barry was staying late in the forensics labs at the CCPD, ripping himself apart over some evidence that he couldn't sort out. Those times were especially excruciating, because while Barry was too tired to pick up on all the fine details, Wally could easily see what he was missing to solve a case and was unable to let the man know. Other nights, it was neither of those instances. Barry would be half asleep and half awake. He would lie in bed, Iris snoring softly beside him, with his eyes bloodshot and trained on the ceiling.

Wally had no way of knowing what events had occurred during the day for Barry to look such a way. He had been busy at Wayne manor. But on those nights, like the one that was happening at that moment, Barry would lazily toss the sheets to the side and stumble to the bathroom. Wally had enough decency to wait outside the door and, though he'd try not to listen because listening to someone go to the bathroom was plain awkward, he would hear Barry sigh. Barry would turn on the faucet, splash what was probably his face, turn it off, turn it on again, turn it off, and then there would be silence. If the man was in there for over an hour, Wally would tentatively inch his way through the door, only to find Barry with his arms around his knees and sitting against the bathtub, fast asleep.

Wally would be there with him until Aunt Iris knocked on the door at sunrise and woke Barry up. She seemed to guess every time that the man had been in there for a while, but she never said anything. She only walked downstairs and called the department, letting them know that Barry would be late for work.

When Wally appeared back in Dick's bedroom, the acrobat was changing. Wally was grateful for the fact that Dick seemed to wear leggings (or something like that - spandex? Man-dex?) beneath everything, so seeing his friend half shirtless wasn't really a problem. Dick adjusted his collar and pulled on his blazer without looking at the ghost. "So, where do you keep disappearing off to?" he asked conversationally, sitting down on his bed to pull on his socks.

Wally didn't think there was any point in denying the truth. Where else would he go? "Home," he answered. Dick nodded, pulling on his socks and moving in front of the mirror to adjust his tie. Wally wrinkled his nose. It must have been a pain in the ass to wear a tie every day, especially for someone who grew up in a circus where he had probably been 50% naked 90% of the time. Dick squirted some hair gel onto his hands and rubbed it over his fingers absentmindedly.

Then, with a dramatic sweep of his fingers through his bangs, he spun around and gave a nervous, albeit attempting to be brilliant, smile. "I want go with you," he declared.

"I usually go while Barry's sleeping," Wally deadpanned. Not to rain on Dick's parade, but he didn't think anyone would appreciate the Boy Wonder watching them sleep.

Dick rolled his eyes and dragged the rest of the gel through his hair. His smile grew less nervous at Wally's apparently amusing response. "No, smartass. I mean I'll go with you to your house after school."

Wally's eyes widened thoughtfully. "Think Batsy'll let you?" he asked.

Dick snorted. "No, but when'd that ever stop me? He hasn't been paying attention to where I go lately, anyway. Al says he's just giving me space, but I really just think that he doesn't know how to apologise and went back into hibernation."

"Bats hibernate?" asked Wally. Dick only shrugged and glanced at the time, before proceeding to scramble his things into his backpack.

"Besides," Dick said as he shoved his binder into his bag and zipped it up, slinging the hefty thing onto his back. "I kind of...owe it to you." Wally didn't say anything, urging Dick on. "I mean, I sort of blew up on you the other day and it wasn't really any of my business. And...I guess it could work? It's not like Batman has a file on ghost properties, but we'll never know if we don't try."

When Dick glanced up at him, it was to Wally's grin, and it felt as if the room finally released the breath that it had been holding for the past week. "See? This is why you're my best pal."

Wally was more than happy to be the reason that Dick practically skipped into the car that morning under Alfred's startled eye.

* * *

The nerves kicked in when Wally and Dick found that there was no one home. There was a reasonable explanation: Iris was a reporter with unspecified hours and Barry was still at the lab. The nerves weren't for not knowing where his guardians were, however. The nerves were for the realisation that what they were about to do could either end spectacularly well, or spectacularly bad.

"Hi," Dick said kindly to the front desk of the Central City Police Department. He had his sunglasses on and had changed in the alleyway of the Central-Gotham zeta tube, trading out his private school uniform for a green hoodie and black sweatpants. He had made sure to shake his hair out from its gelled back look to give himself easy recognisability for Barry, too. With the amount of identities that Dick had, Wally wouldn't be surprised if the smallest change caused him to be unrecognisable. The woman behind the front desk looked up lazily, her eyes scanning with semi-interest over Dick's appearance. His windswept hair and baggy clothes made him look like any apathetic teenager, but the glasses must have passed him off for more of the rebellious side. Honestly, Wally was only thankful that it was sunny outside so that Dick actually had an excuse to be wearing them.

"Hello," she said, propping her elbows on the desk. "How may I help you?"

"I'm here to see Barry. Barry Allen," said Dick as the secretary glanced over to her computer screen and began to type in the name. "Barry. B-A-R-R-Y. Allen. A-L-L-E-N."

"Forensics?" the secretary asked suspiciously. "I thought you were talking about someone in interrogation. Is Mr. Allen your father?"

"Not exactly," Dick said. "Could you please let him know that Rob is here to see him?"

The woman held his gaze for a moment before writing down the name on a sticky note. "Alright, son. Just sit over there. Don't expect him to be out immediately, though."

"Thank you," replied Dick as he went to sit in one of the chairs in front of the main door.

Wally couldn't stand still. He buzzed around constantly, pacing right in front of Dick's nose as the boy sat absolutely still, probably trying to block Wally's actions from his mind. It didn't seem to be working, but Wally mentally cheered at the fact that Dick couldn't exactly complain when no one else would have been able to see what he was complaining about.

Fortunately, it didn't take long for Barry to appear. In fact, Wally would have bet that it took two minutes tops for the man to go skidding around the corner, arriving at a screeching stop in front of Dick. The waiting room stared, but Barry gave them no mind. "Rob!" the man exclaimed. Dick got up and laughed as Barry gave him a hug. Wally would never admit that he burned with jealousy, and his gut dropped painfully. He really did miss getting hugs from anyone, let alone from the Flash, his mentor and partner and uncle. "What'cha doing here, kiddo?"

"I actually need to talk to you about something," Dick chuckled nervously. He made a point to quickly glance about the room, too quick for normal eyes to promptly catch, but definitely slow enough for the Flash. Barry sobered up quickly, nodding, though he didn't hide his confusion.

"Well, you're right on time. I was just about to head out for the day. Want to walk with me for a second? I just need to grab my things and we'll be out of here in no time," the man said.

Dick agreed and the two of them began walking down the hall, Dick with his hands stuffed in his pockets and his eyes trained on the ground, most likely to ignore the way that Wally dragged himself between them. Wally ached for Barry to just go faster. Get outside. It would only take a few minutes for Dick to tell Barry about Wally's existence, right? Then Barry would be able to see him and everything would be okay.

Right?

"So, how's your dad been doing?" Barry asked as they turned into the lab. Dick hesitated for a split second while Wally strode in, until Barry reassured him that he was fine to be in there as long as he stuck by the speedster.

"He's been okay," Dick answered absentmindedly. Wally knew that Barry had said 'dad' because anything specific would have been too much of an indicator as to Dick's identity, either as Robin or as Dick Grayson, but Wally couldn't help but want to correct his mentor himself. Probably because Dick had done it so much to Wally that he couldn't help it.

"Did you ever get to know why he was looking for you?" pressed the hero.

"Uh, yeah. Just something that happened at home. No biggy," reassured Dick, though by the look on Barry's face, the answer wasn't very comforting.

"So you're not here about any of that?"

"Nope."

At least Barry could take a hint, and they were silent as Barry picked up his jacket and began to organise the files and slides on his desk, picking up a few papers and sealing them into a folder that he put into a drawer.

"Wait," Wally said loudly, though only Dick paused in his actions. "That file. The one on his desk, right there," the redhead said, pointing to the file in question that lay beside Barry's microscope. "Tell him that the numbers are messages." At least Wally would be able to help Barry get more sleep. Working too much was definitely unhealthy.

"What?" Dick hissed, confused.

"Just do it," pleaded Wally.

"Uh," said Dick loudly, prompting Barry's attention as the man stopping in his rifling. "The-"

"Willmorth Case," Wally said.

"-Willmorth Case," Dick continued in a lower voice, causing Barry to frown. "The numbers in the file. They're messages."

"What?" Barry exclaimed after a moment, flipping open the folder and staring at the report. "You mean the numbers painted on the walls of the robbed houses? How did you know that?"

Dick only gave him a raised eyebrow, and Barry didn't pursue Dick's knowledge of the information any further. "Why didn't you tell the detectives? I'm just supposed to collect the evidence, not piece it together."

Dick shrugged. "They would have questioned me more than you," he responded.

There was a moment where Barry slowly flipped through the pictures in the stabled papers, before he gave a great smile that had Dick blinking back puzzlement. "Yes!" he cheered in success, grabbing the papers and glancing up to a man in a badge on the other side of the room, speaking to a different forensics personnel in a white lab jacket. The man wasted no time in ditching Dick and racing over to the uniform.

"What was that for?" Dick mumbled, pretending to be occupied with his phone.

"He's been killing himself over that case for a few nights now. He always wants to crack the hard cases, especially the parts that don't have anything to do with forensics," elaborated Wally.

Dick smiled at that, though Wally didn't really know why. Barry was back in no time with an avid expression and a pat on Dick's shoulder. Wally was relieved to practically feel the change in Barry's posture, as if something large and burdening had been lifted from his back. "Thanks, Kid," he said.

Dick's eyebrows furrowed at the nickname and, that time, Wally knew why. The redhead had normally been the one to help Barry on cases, after all. Even if unintentionally, he felt a rush of pride seep through him, the same pride that surfaced when Flash congratulated him on a job well done. It were almost as if Barry were talking to him instead of Dick. "I hate being a medium," Dick muttered. Barry didn't hear him.

Barry looked as if he were bursting with questions by the time the two (three) of them stepped onto the sidewalk outside of the CCPD. "Okay, spill," he promptly demanded. Dick sighed.

"Not here."

Without waiting for a protest, Barry took Dick by the arm and rounded the corner into an alleyway. Wally groaned as the two disappeared in a flash of light.

Well, whatever. Barry may have had superspeed, but Wally had teleportation.

Wally appeared in front of the living room couch, his knee just barely through the coffee table, right as Barry unlocked the front door. Dick looked past the man to blink in surprise at Wally's presence, but otherwise made no comment as Barry kicked the door closed. Barry turned to look at Dick expectantly.

"Relax, it's not bad news," Dick said. Barry sighed in relief and slumped as he made his way to the kitchen.

"I hope not. I could use a lot less of that," he mumbled, and Wally felt guilty for having died. Out of all emotions concerning his death, Wally had never thought that one of them would be guilt. "Do you want anything? Cookies? Water? Waffles?"

"Interesting assortment," quipped Dick. "But I'm good. Thanks."

Barry shrugged and grabbed a few cookies from the counter. He was almost done with the first one by the time he had crossed the kitchen and living room to sit beside Dick on the couch. Wally stood in front of them, on the opposite side of the coffee table, with his hands on his hips. He felt sort of bad for staring so intensely at Dick considering that Barry was doing the same, but there was really nowhere else worth looking with what was about to happen.

"This is going to sound insane. Just hear me out, alright? I'm not crazy," said Dick, and Wally couldn't help but remark that he pleaded sanity despite what he had said during their earlier argument at the mountain. It brought that argument to mind and he almost missed what Dick asked next. "Do you believe in ghosts?"

"What?" was Barry's hesitant answer. He munched slower through his second cookie and set the rest on the table. Dick waited for the man to swallow. "Uh, not really? You're going to find very few scientists who believe in the supernatural, bud."

"You're a guy with superspeed who fights crime alongside a bunch of aliens and you don't believe in ghosts?" Dick retorted.

"But all of that can be explained with science," Barry pointed out. "Ghosts...can't."

"They better be, or else you're going to question everything you've built your life on," muttered Dick. That time, Barry heard him.

"Seriously, Robin. What are you going on about?" demanded the man, a frown having inched its way onto his face. Dick took a moment to stare at the new expression, and Wally figured that his best friend hadn't seen Barry without his smile very often.

"Hurry up," Wally urged. Dick shot him a glare.

"This is harder than it looks," he told Wally. Barry whipped his head to look at Wally but, seeing nothing, only increased his frown.

Before Barry could say more, Dick took a deep breath. "Wally's a ghost. And I can see him. And he's in this room."

It really couldn't have gone much more awkwardly than it did. Wally stood there, expectant and hopeful, darting glances at Dick who looked like he wanted nothing more than to crawl six feet underground and stay there. Wally didn't blame his best friend. The way that Barry was staring at him made Wally feel crazy, too. If the redhead didn't keep accidentally walking through the coffee table in anticipation, he might have doubted his own existence as a ghost.

"Did you go on patrol with Batman last night?" was the first thing that Barry asked.

Dick narrowed his eyes. "What?"

Barry reached for his communicator. "I think you need to get to the Batcave. You were probably sprayed with fear gas. I heard some rumours about what happened last time. That stuff is nasty-"

"No!" Dick exclaimed, grasping Barry's slowly crawling wrist. The speedster stopped and looked at the young teenager in concern, which only caused Dick to bristle. "I'm fine. Trust me, I'd know if I got infected with fear gas, and I've been able to see Wally for weeks now. He's been asking me to tell you, but I knew you'd just think I'm insane." He set his jaw and purposely prevented his eyes from straying towards Wally, but his words were clear enough.

"If I'm such an inconvenience, why'd you help me?" Wally countered. Dick didn't answer, but his grip on Barry's wrist tightened.

" _Richard_ , you need  _help_ ," Barry insisted, yanking his hand away from the younger boy's grasp. "Are you telling me that the reason you've been all happy is because you think you've been speaking with...with  _Wally_?" The man stuttered at the name, and Wally winced.

"I don't  _think_  I have, I  _know_  I have," snapped Dick. Barry abruptly stood up, causing Wally to stumble back a step. The one thing that would probably crush his memory of Barry forever would be if he accidentally went through the man. He had to maintain a sense of normalcy somehow, after all.

"Kiddo, if you could always see Wally, why not before? You were depressed," the speedster continued cautiously. "Have you ever thought that maybe you're just...seeing him to get over your depression? A mechanism of your mind to deal with grief? A trick?"

"I live in  _Gotham_!" Dick exclaimed in frustration. "I've dealt with enough crazies and illusions and depression and grief and insane inmates to know that I'm not one of them!"

"Has Batman taken you to see a therapist?"

"Yes! I've been seeing a therapist ever since Wally's death, without fail. Stop trying to discredit me and just listen for a second!"

" _Dick,_  things like this have happened before. Has he said anything unlike how he...used to be? Look, I know you don't create illusions on purpose. It's just a-"

"Wally's standing right behind you, listening to everything you're saying. If you think you can trick me into thinking that Wally's not real, try tricking Wally into thinking that he's not real. See how far you get with that."

"God, stop mentioning him!" Barry finally shouted, causing Dick's prepared response to die on his lips. Barry fell back onto the couch defeated, palms pressed against his forehead. Wally hurt. From where, he didn't know. He had no chest and he had no heart, but he had a soul and he had feeling and all he knew was that it hurt. Barry's words hurt. "He's gone. Jesus, Dick, he's gone and he's always going to be gone! We can't ever get him back. He's not a ghost, he's not alive, he's not here. No matter what we want ourselves to believe."

There was silence as Barry stared at his toes. Dick wasted no time in lifting his own head to stare helplessly at Wally, who could only bite his fingers and squeeze his eyes shut. What could he, as a transparent spirit, possibly do to convince Barry that he was real?

What did they do in the movies?

"Tell him...," the redhead began as Dick looked on quizzically. "Tell him that I remember when Barry came to my house a couple years ago. I was still living with my dad. My dad answered the door and Barry was angry about something, but I don't know what and I still don't know what."

Dick nodded and began repeating the tale. After a moment, Wally went on. "Barry came in and slammed his fists on the counter, ranting, while I was watching from behind the bars of the stairs. I had been about to go down and get food, but I was nervous because at that point people were actually talking down there and I wasn't used to loud noises.

"Barry wanted some food and my dad told him to get whatever he wanted. My dad went back to the couch as he began pulling the weirdest pieces of food from the fridge because we've always had a bunch of random snacks but never full, actual meals. Unless they were microwaveable. And then Barry walked into the living room and started ranting about how bad of a mess it was and that my aunt was going to be over later and they should at least try to clean it up. He said it looked like my dad lived in a dump, and I remember that especially because I'd always thought that it had looked normal. After a while, I remember going back upstairs to wait until everyone left, but an hour later I inched back down because I had heard yelling and screaming.

"Barry had found something in the bathroom. It was heroin, but I didn't know that at the time, I just knew that it was my dad's private things that I wasn't allowed to go near and that's why I was never allowed to go into that bathroom. And Barry shouted for a minute and then went silent and concerned and cautious and then finally, finally, he had asked about me.

"I had never really talked to Barry before then. At first, he tried to be friends with me, but when I tried to make friends with him my dad always looked like he disapproved and I never wanted to disapprove my dad. I mean, my dad never touched me or anything, but that was kind of the problem. He never acknowledged me at all. Barry did, which was why I got so attached to him, but I thought it obligatory that I should care about my dad more than Barry, so I hid from Barry until Barry eventually figured that I just didn't like him and left me alone.

"That was years before then. I never talked or even let Barry look at me until then, but when he asked about me is when I got so surprised that I missed a step on the stairs and stumbled. I didn't fall all the way down, but I made enough noise that he looked up and saw me. He must have seen something that he didn't like, because he looked back at my dad with more anger than I had ever seen him with."

Throughout the story, Barry had gone frozen and his fingers had only started gripping tighter into his hair. "Then he marched up the stairs, and I thought Barry was angry at me so I got really, really scared. He grabbed me by the arm, but not tight enough to hurt, and practically dragged me out of there. I ate dinner for the first time with him and Iris. I had to go back for the night, but the next morning some police officers came over and inspected the place and it was pretty bad, like one of those drug dens, but I didn't think so at the time. The police thought it was pretty bad, though, because they let me stay with Barry after that and I kind of just never left." Wally felt a little embarrassed to have gotten so carried away, but he had figured that the more details, the better. Apparently so, because when Barry lifted his head, he was ghastly white.

"How did you know that?" he demanded of Dick.

Dick stared ahead with a carefully concealing blank expression. "I didn't," he said, pointing to where Wally stood. "Wally did."

Barry turned his head to look at where Wally was and, for just a second, the redhead felt like Barry was actually looking at him. But then the second passed and Barry went back to looking straight through.

But Wally was on a roll. "When I asked what my name should be for becoming Kid Flash, he said that I should be Baby Chick, because I was all yellow and you, Robin, were kind of like my role model for being a sidekick while Flash was my hero. He said that I should just combine both of my role models and keep the bird sidekick theme going."

"You told Wally that he should be called Baby Chick?" Dick asked Barry. Barry, amidst the cluster of emotions he was being assaulted with, actually gave out a breath that could have meant amusement.

"I-wow," Barry nervously breathed. "Uhm, is it possible- I mean, how do you- what can I do to- y'know, I want to be able to see him," he said shakily, wiping his palms off on his jeans.

Wally whooped, jumping up and pumping his fist into the air as he began to cheer. "Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Dick, yes! God, I love you, yes, yes, yes! He knows I'm here. He knows I'm real! It's my freaking birthday!"

Dick decided not to respond to Wally's obvious source of celebration in favour of relieving Barry's confusion. "You have to empty your mind," he said simply.

"'Empty my mind'?" Barry echoed. "How do I do that? I'm a speedster, it's pretty much impossible for me to go thoughtless." Unfortunately, Wally heard that and promptly sobered up.

"Well, we can still zone out," he protested.

Dick had to think about that for a moment. "I really don't know what having a hyperactive mind is like," he said slowly. "It's hard for me to imagine it. You just," he paused for a moment, struggling for the right words. "Don't think about anything? Stare at the wall and let yourself go blank. Zone out."

Barry scratched the back of his head, looking conflicted on how to take that information, but eventually nodded and did exactly as Dick said. He stared at the wall. Dick didn't dare move, didn't dare breathe, but he nodded at Wally. The redhead took the hint and began talking.

"Lalalala, what to say, what to say. Uhm, well, you should really get more sleep? Barry, I mean, not you, Dick. Well, I take that back. You should get some more sleep, too. Actually, everyone in the hero community needs to get more sleep. I need more sleep. I need to be physically capable of getting more sleep. Do you know the weirdest part about being a spirit? You don't sleep. You know why that's weird? Everything just feels like one long day. You said it's been a few weeks. It doesn't feel like weeks. At all. And months? Psh, it hasn't felt like months, either. It feels like the most dramatic day in the day of all days. It's like a soap opera season. Everything in one long day where everyone cries in the end and the same dramatic music plays every episode," Wally rambled.

'You watch soap operas?' Dick mouthed.

"I deny the fact that I compared not sleeping to a soap opera. Me? Soap operas? Nah. Aunt Iris watches them all the time. She denies it, but we all know that she does. Unlike me. I deny it, but we all know that I don't. That I don't watch them, I mean. Not that I don't deny watching them. Because I do deny watching them. Not deny as in to say something that's true is false, but deny as in it never happened. You know what? I should get off the topic of soap operas. Do you know what the Batcave looks like? It's a freaking museum. There's a T-Rex. There is a life-sized model of a green T-Rex in the Batcave and I have no idea why it's there. I don't think Rob knows why, either. It's just there. And it watches you. I feel like it's watching me and that's weird because a) I'm dead and b) it's dead. Then again, if I've learned one thing, it's that things that are supposed to be dead sometimes aren't really dead. Which might make zombies real. Which sucks. But that's okay, because I'm not solid, so if a zombie apocalypse happens then I'll be perfectly fine. In other words, the Walking Dead might be predicting the future, like the Mayans or something," continued the ghostly redhead as he began automatically pacing the carpet. He paused for a moment to glance at his uncle before continuing. Wally figured that Dick was pretty sick of hearing his voice ringing in his ears by the time the five minute mark had passed. He was honestly impressed with how long Barry was keeping his concentration. Wally knew from experience how short a speedster's attention span and patience could be.

Barry opened his eyes and shook his head, eyebrows creased in frustration. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" Wally exclaimed, throwing his hands up. "I just gave a speech that could rival Martin Luther King Jr. and it's 'nothing'?"

Barry stood up abruptly and turned to face Dick, who was perched on the arm of the couch. "It's kind of ridiculous," he said with an awkward, sad chuckle. "I don't understand how it's possible for that to happen. And what makes it so that a blank mind is able to hear ghosts?"

Dick seemed to have no explanation to that. At least, no explanation that a scientist of such level could possibly accept. "Ghosts," Barry muttered with a shake of his head. "If ghosts were real, more people would have seen them by now. If he was haunting me, I'd have seen him by now. Things that can accidentally happen occur more than once." Barry put one hand on his hip as if to steel himself, breathing in slowly. Neither Dick nor Wally moved, watching as the speedster seemed to be running through something in his mind. Slowly, the older hero turned to eye Dick.

"You-," he started, staring at the boy. "I've spent all this time finally getting my life back together, after the person who had become as close to my child as someone can possibly get without being biological  _died_. He's  _dead_. Gone. And then you come. You got yourself hit by some gas or some mental illness or depression, and then you come in here trying to drag me back. You brought my hopes up, and now I feel like the efforts I've taken throughout these months haven't mattered at all." His breaths turned heavy and shaky as he put one hand out, though for what was uncertain. Probably to steady himself.

Dick wisely said nothing. "You're just seeing things, Dick," Barry croaked. "And by  _God_ , leave me and leave  _Wallace_  out of it."

Then, with a swish of the wind, the man was gone.

"Shit," Wally groaned, sinking to the floor as Dick stared silently into his hands. "So close. We were so close." Dick slowly slid off of the arm of the couch as the redhead began pressing into his eyes with the heels of his hands. "He could have- why couldn't he have-"

"It wouldn't have worked," Dick interrupted as he kneeled beside his friend, his palms rubbing his thighs. He stayed a safe distance away, a foot, enough to give the illusion of comfort between them but not enough to make it apparent that Wally was only air. When Wally looked ready to protest, Dick continued. "Not just because he's a speedster, Wally. I knew it wouldn't work."

"Then why did you try?" Wally rasped. His throat felt tight. His chest felt tight. The realisation that victory had been only seconds away cut through him like rigid knives and he wanted to scream at how unfair it all was. He had come so close. So close that his very soul yearned for nothing more than to follow Barry and keep talking, keep begging for the man to hear him.

Dick bit his lip. "You wanted to so badly," he said. "But you can't tell someone to empty their mind. They would have to think about emptying their mind to empty it. And telling them why only adds that to their command, to use as motivation, but they're still thinking. It just isn't possible."

"I thought it would be easy," Wally mumbled into his hand. "You heard and saw me just by zoning out. No magic spells or genetic experiments or 'chosen one' deals. No demons eating souls. Just plain zoning out."

"But it's not," the acrobat mumbled back, and Wally nodded into his hands. "Nothing's ever easy."

Nothing was ever fair.

* * *

"Batman, you need to let this go. Wally's name isn't a curse word. It's perfectly logical for Robin to be reminded of him when he saw Barry," Black Canary sighed as she stood in front of the Watchtower's zeta tube to Mount Justice. She had been about to go through to start an impromptu training session with herself and Superboy, as he was rapidly proving that once a week team sessions weren't going to cut it, before being intercepted by the Dark Knight himself.

"I'm not looking for your opinion, I'm informing you," Bruce rumbled.

Black Canary didn't look happy. "And what will you do? Send him to another therapist?"

Bruce wouldn't tell her that he'd actually been contemplating that. The issue was that Dick's recent activity was getting suspicious. There was nothing else to it but that and a rancid, terrible gut feeling. The boy became easily distracted even when there was nothing apparent to Bruce that could possibly be distracting. He laughed when nothing was funny, after a long period of grief where he never laughed at the most funny of things. He changed moods suddenly and violently and Bruce might have blamed it on hormones if the tests hadn't said that Dick was perfectly fine.

Dick was reacting to things out of sync with what was actually happening. At least, what was actually happening in the real world.

And that was what worried Bruce the most. Dick was always in his own world. The only world where Bruce didn't know what was going on. What was happening in that world of his?

"What my partner and I do is no concern of yours," vaguely responded Bruce.

"That's the thing," Black Canary huffed, unconvinced and more than a little frustrated. "This may be your team on paper, Batman, but it's my team, too. It's Aqualad's team, too. It's Red Tornado's team, too. These kids see me and Red Tornado more than they see you or their families. As their trainer, therapist, and friend, I deserve and need to know what's going on with them."

To some extent, Black Canary had a valid point. But Black Canary was more oblivious to the situation than Bruce was, and Bruce knew little enough already. "Then until the situation is investigated, Robin is being put on leave from the team. Consider him away for family matters." To Bruce, that was correct enough. He was part of Dick's family, after all.

Black Canary glared. She even opened her mouth, daring to give a snappy retort, when the zeta tubes lit up and the Flash appeared. Bruce stiffened, unwilling to discuss what probably had a lot to do with the Flash's deceased nephew in front of the man himself. But it didn't seem as if Bruce's reluctance would be necessary. That was apparent by the way the speedster stumbled from underneath the beam and covered his face with his hands.

The light glistened off of the clear liquid coating them. Black Canary started, eyes widened. "Barry!" she exclaimed, rushing over to her teammate's shoulder. Bruce knew that the liquid could only be tears, by Barry's posture and by where his hands were, but it didn't fully register that the man was crying until he gave off a soft sob.

The happy-go-lucky, obnoxious speedster. Crying. That was an odd concept.

Bruce really hated it when people cried.

"What hap-," Black Canary tried to ask, but Barry abruptly cut her off by yanking his hands from his eyes and glaring at Bruce. Bruce, needless to say, was taken aback.

"Do you ever care enough about your partner to actually know what's going on?" Barry spat, and Bruce was starting to wish that Barry would go back to being loud and stupidly happy. He had thought that a serious Barry would have brought about a nice change, but it only made everything feel weird and strange. As if the balance and order of things were being misplaced and disorganised. "Do you ever think about Robin more than your dumb mission? Than your work?"

Bruce stood in silence as Barry went off on a short tirade, attracting the attention of Green Arrow and Aquaman, who were close by. Black Canary worriedly touched Barry's elbow, but he wasn't paying attention to anything but his own thoughts and the man in front of him. "No, you don't. You can't be bothered to even ask Robin if that kid's okay! Because no, he's not okay, in fact, he's ill."

"What are you talking about?" Bruce growled, already well on his way in blocking out the spat insults. Barry was ranting in his own anger. Of course Bruce paid Dick the due amount of attention. Dick came first. Didn't Barry know that?

Didn't Dick?

"He's sick, Batman!" Barry shouted. "He thinks he can  _see ghosts_. He thinks that my  _nephew_  is a  _ghost_! He thinks that Wally is following him around, and he tried convincing me to believe the same!"

There was a shocked silence from the League members within earshot as those words seemed to be what put the expressive speedster under. A choked cry crawled up from Barry's throat and he shook his head violently. "Someone's needed to set you straight for a while. Take this as an example. Because take it from me, Batman, when Robin is suddenly yanked from you, you'll know everything that you did wrong that you never noticed before. And you'll never be able to fix them." With that, he raced back through the zeta beam, the machine almost too slow to react to Barry's fast moving particles. He was gone before the tube finished announcing his code.

Bruce wasn't far behind.

It wasn't hard to track where Dick was, considering it had been Barry who had delivered 'the news', as Bruce was going to vaguely call it, and the fact that Dick also had a tracker in his jean pocket. It took everything Bruce had not to kick down his teammate's back door when he arrived in full costume from a nearby alley. Instead, he restrained himself to lockpicking. When the backdoor of the Allen household swung open, it wasn't hard to find Dick sitting nearby on the floor.

His shoulders were hunched and he looked like he was concentrating on something. Something that wasn't Bruce. His palms were slowly rubbing his thighs, a nervous habit that Bruce had discovered while first training the boy, and his eyes were squeezed shut.

Bruce was going to call out for Robin until he saw Dick's glasses lying abandoned on the other side of the carpet. Why the boy had flung them there, Bruce had no idea, but the man was thankful in a way. At least it meant that he could call Dick by his real name and the boy would know that he was serious. "Dick," he growled.

Dick didn't look up, but his hands stopped moving. He mumbled something, but it was too quiet for Bruce to catch.

Bruce wasn't a conversationalist. He strode up to Dick and planted a palm firmly on the boy's shoulder, kneeling so that he could try to look his ward in the eyes. Dick's own eyes remained on the ground for a few more seconds, until Batman's patient position coaxed them upwards. Bruce's eyes narrowed behind the cowl. Time to cut straight to chase. "Where is Wally?"

Dick stared. He was searching for something and, for once, Bruce didn't know what. Dick was part of a world that Bruce had no place in, no knowledge about. After a few minutes of silence, the boy finally opened his mouth. "Behind you," he said quietly. Bruce didn't bother turning around.

"No, he's not," responded Bruce.

More silence. At first, Bruce wondered why Dick let the silence lapse so easily. He normally never did. In fact, Dick hated silence. But then it occurred to him that, according to Barry, Dick was hearing an extra voice that didn't exist for the rest of them. No longer existed. Dick nodded subtly to himself as his eyes narrowed, too. "You're so ready to just accept that he's gone."

"That's because he is."

Bruce wanted to think that he was being gentle when he coaxed Dick into a standing position, but he hadn't been gentle in so long that it was hard to remember the meaning. A person just didn't gently hospitalise the Joker or gently save Gotham from a crazy plant lady turning its citizens into trees. "You not wanting to believe that is the reason you think you're being haunted," Bruce continued.

"I'm not being haunted," Dick protested. "Haunt is an ugly word. He's lonely, Bruce."

The 'just like me' went unsaid, but it went unsaid in a language that Bruce could read. "Let's go home," Bruce said, and he even surprised himself with how quiet his words were. They were practically whispered, unnecessary in a house that held only the two of them.

Dick complied, but didn't agree. In fact, he said nothing at all.


	7. Chapter 7

If he were in any other mood, Dick would have said that it was embarrassing to be back in Miss. Frances' office. As it was, though, Dick didn't have the emotional capacity for embarrassment. He only felt numb.

There was no way that Wally wasn't real. Wally had been walking right beside him as Bruce had led the both of them back to the Batcave. Wally was loitering beside Miss. Frances right at that moment, glaring at her with the heat of a thousand suns.

Wally was...only seen by Dick.

"Richard?" Miss. Frances's sickly sweet voice broke into Dick's thoughts. He didn't want to lift his head. He couldn't be bothered. From the corner of his eyes, though, Dick thought that she just looked curious. "Richard, your father told me that you've been seeing Wally?"

She said it so casually that Dick almost forgot that it was wrong. It was supposed to be wrong that he saw Wally. It was supposed to all be wrong. "He's not my father. He's Bruce."

"Bruce, then. Bruce told me that you've been seeing Wally."

Dick shrugged and offered no confirmation, nor denial.

"When did you first start seeing Wally?"

Dick wasn't sure if he should start answering the woman's questions. His eyes flickered to where Wally stood, looking so dejected and  _re_ jected that Dick felt more lost than he had before. Did Wally want Dick to answer honestly? Did he want Dick to deny his existence? What did Wally want Dick to do?

What did Dick want to do?

Dick wanted to get answers. If Miss. Frances was convinced that she had them, well, that was the closest thing that Dick had. "A few weeks ago."

"How did he appear to you?"

Dick attempted to push Wally's presence from his mind. He had to ignore Wally. Just for right then. Ignore Wally so that it would make talking about him easier. Wally wouldn't mind. He understood. "Uh, here. First he kind of shouted something, but I don't remember what it was. It sounded like him, but I couldn't see him. I could only hear his jumbled up voice."

"Was that a few of our sessions ago? When you had thought you heard something, and I thought it was the construction workers?"

"Yeah."

She jotted something down. "When did you first see him?"

"English class."

"When Bruce said that you fainted?"

"Yeah."

Dick felt like he was getting nowhere.

"And where is he now?"

Dick automatically moved his eyes to where Wally was. The redhead's fists were tight and his face was all scrunched up. In all honesty, he looked like he was trying hard not to cry. Dick didn't want his best friend to cry. He had never even known that ghosts could cry. Despite not saying anything to the therapist, she acknowledged his glance. "Is he behind my chair?"

A pause. "Yeah."

"What is he doing?"

Dick was about to say something mundane, wanted to say something mundane and uncooperative and monotone. He wanted to only say that Wally was reading Miss. Frances's notes. But there was more to Wally than that, and he wanted to tell Wally that it was going to be alright, so why not kill two birds with one stone?

"He's trying not to cry."

Wally bit his lip at that. His fists uncurled immediately, as if he'd just realised what he had been doing, and one went to rub at the back of his neck. A nervous habit.

"Why do you think he would be crying?" Dick looked pointedly at Wally, waiting for an answer to give to Miss. Frances, waiting for an answer to give to himself, but Miss. Frances spoke before Wally could. "Don't ask him," she said. "Why do  _you_  think he's crying?" She looked fascinated.

To Dick's surprise, Wally said nothing. "He's sad," the acrobat blurted.

He felt ridiculous.

"Why is he sad?"

Why was Wally sad? Dick frowned, staring at his best friend, but Wally didn't want to look him in the face. Miss. Frances shifted her body so that Dick's attention switched back to her. "His uncle doesn't know that he's still here. He can't see him."

"Wally's uncle rejected him?" Miss. Frances rephrased. Dick nodded. "Does Bruce reject you?"

How did the subject suddenly turn to him and Bruce? He stiffened and she must have noticed. "Take a deep breath, Richard," she soothed, voice grating in Dick's ears. "You don't have to answer completely if you don't want to. I only ask that whatever you do say is honest." She spoke slowly, as if Dick wouldn't understand if she didn't spell it out for him, and emphasised seemingly random words.

Did Bruce reject him? No. If Bruce rejected him, then he'd be neglected, and Dick was anything but neglected. Bruce made sure that he got good grades, went on patrol with him almost every night, was up to date in training, etc. Sure, that was all physical, never mental, but why should it have been any different? Bruce was his partner, not his father. It didn't matter if Dick longed for it to be the other way around.

But even partners offered a little comfort every once in awhile, didn't they?

When Dick didn't speak, Miss. Frances jotted something down into her notes. Wally barely grazed over them with his eyes. "Think about how Wally's emotions reflect in your own. Do Wally's emotions match yours? Do his actions express what you wish to do? We're about out of time, but just think about it, alright? Tell me what you come up with in our next session." She smiled brightly.

As Dick went to stand in the empty, echoing hallway outside of the office's waiting room, he thought that he could only be certain of two things:

1\. He wasn't crazy.

2\. The way that Wally stood there with his head low, silent, reminded Dick exactly of himself.

* * *

Tyler Billard, Gotham Academy's only English 1 teacher, had been wary of Dick Grayson before the boy's best friend had died. His job required him to treat the boy as he treated the rest of his students, but the pressure from the school staff to make sure the boy got the best grades that he could was immense, considering Bruce Wayne was the school's main funder. All year, the man had to make excuses in the grade book for any grade less than spectacular: English was his second language, he was absent during a review day, he went to the nurse's, he had a math competition coming up, etc. It was exhausting, to say the least.

So, hearing from Mr. Wayne's butler a few days ago that Dick was undergoing therapy treatment for "mental issues" made Tyler want to follow in the example of 75% of his Freshmen and not show up to class.

Sadly, he only had two personal days throughout the entire year. Tyler made a mental note to go on strike sometime in the future.

"How's Dick been?" Helen Adams asked, a teacher from the nearby science department. She had Dick as a student as well, but in her computer science class, which the boy seemed to have no problem in no matter how many days he was absent. Tyler reasoned that she probably had a dramatically lower stress rate associated with the boy because of it. It was second period, a free hour for the both of them, and Helen had made herself known by wandering into the room to steal Tyler's sandwich. He was fine with the food robbery. His wife seemed to pack him more food every year, despite the fact that he was getting older, not younger.

The aging man ran his fingers through his balding scalp, thinking of something positive and having something else come from his mouth instead. "Strange."

"How so?" pressed Helen. She was a new teacher. Tyler had taught her himself what felt like only a handful of years ago. But, as a new teacher, she was young and utterly convinced that she could help every student that she encountered. Tyler didn't even remember when he had held that same enthusiasm.

"I recently got a note from his psychiatrist, excusing him from the Romeo and Juliet final. I had to have Dick sit in the back of the class while everyone else was taking the test, and I honestly don't think it was for the best. They're trying to put less stress on him, but he makes it look like he has nothing to distract his mind with," the confused English major said. "And I don't think he likes that. He kept coming up to me, asking for some in-class essays to work on, but I don't want to give him To Kill A Mockingbird yet because I haven't even prepared the first week's essay prompts for it."

Helen thought about that, chewing Tyler's sandwich slowly. She swallowed. "He makes computer science look easy, even while kids walk out complaining that I give the most homework out of all of their classes. He doesn't look stressed at all in there. A little bored, if anything."

"No fidgeting? Hell, he looks downright paranoid in here, like something's about to jump him," Tyler exclaimed.

Helen shook her head. "No. He's pretty relaxed. It's gotten to the point that I don't really check his homework anymore, I just know that he always does it and he always does it right."

Tyler snorted in disbelief, leaning heavily against his palm. "What, are his 'mental issues' Shakespeare tragedy-induced trauma?"

The woman hummed lightly. "You're scary, but not that scary. What about PTSD? With what happened to his parents and all."

"Don't you think he would have showed symptoms earlier? That happened when he was nine, Helen. I don't think it would spark him to have a panic attack and suddenly faint in the middle of my lesson five years later."

"Dissociative Identity Disorder?" Helen suggested.

Tyler shrugged. "He's always acted like the same person to me. Maybe it's just anxiety or depression. It would be a problem if Mr. Wayne didn't take into serious account the health of his ward, and I wouldn't be surprised if that caused him to go overboard."

"Anxiety and depression are still serious illnesses, Mr. Billard," Helen warned. "It could be, but I don't really think so. I mean, you don't just turn anxiety or depression on and off."

Tyler sighed. In all honesty, he had no idea. Dick clearly didn't want to talk about it, and the English teacher was no counsellor. Helen would have been a great person to go to for personal problems, but Tyler Billard? No way. "Whatever it is, I don't think it's going away anytime soon. You try talking to him. Maybe you'll get somewhere and I can have some more time with what little hair I have left."

* * *

Dick hated the way that his teachers looked at him. His peers were bad enough, but his teachers? Their looks combined with his abnormal lack of homework let him know exactly what they knew, and it made him want to scream.

He wasn't sick. He was in perfect health. Why could no one see that? Yet, from one act of being a good friend, Dick had gone from well-respected both day and night to babied day and put on cave arrest at night. Bruce hadn't let him go on patrol since the episode at the Allen residence two weeks ago. He didn't even have enough homework to occupy him. He felt bored and trapped.

At least Wally felt the same way.

"Well, they don't know that you aren't actually grounded from all of your friends. Guess who's stuck to you for all time?" Wally said as Dick laid upside down on his bed, counting the seconds until he got too lightheaded to get back up.

"Alfred?" Dick suggested.

Wally huffed. "I'm so unappreciated," he whined, causing the acrobat to roll his eyes.

"Well, even if you're here, it's not like you can play videogames with me or anything," Dick said, arching his back so that he could scoot his palms as far as possible underneath his bed before he fell.

"I can talk," Wally protested. "Whadda 'bout gossip? Let's be the new Gossip Boys. I can be your hoarder of secrets."

"I'm not a gossiper, though."

"Then let's go explore somewhere! Do something!" Wally groaned. "Stop wasting your life away."

"What can I do? I'm grounded," deadpanned Dick.

Wally looked at him oddly. "You're being weirdly monotone and I don't like it."

Dick only shrugged as he rolled back into a cross legged position on his bed sheets.

Wally sighed. "Look, being grounded has never stopped you before. Maybe we can go visit Commissioner Gordon and see if he has any easy cases for you to crack. Something you can do that won't upset Batman too much. Or we can check out where the Batcave goes. Isn't it connected to the-"

"Abandoned underground Gotham subway station. That is, until we built a wall between there and the cave after Two-Face and his little band of misfits found the place on accident," responded Dick emotionlessly.

Running a hand down his face, Wally gave an exasperated noise and laid on the ground. When Wally first discovered that he could actually lay down in Dick's room, he had been ecstatic. That was, until Dick pointed out that the manor was made of stone and all it proved was that Wally still couldn't move through raw, unprocessed materials that weren't living. "I don't get it. Why aren't you more upset?" Dick asked.

"What?"

"You're supposed to be the emotional one who can't hide his feelings to save his life. Why aren't you still upset over what happened with Barry?" pressed Dick. Maybe he was being insensitive. He really didn't care at that point.

Wally narrowed his eyes at the ceiling, and Dick absently wondered if maybe he'd pushed too hard. "That's why I want to do something," said Wally. "I'm sick of grieving. I'm still upset over being dead, I don't want to add to the list. Seeing you moping around like life doesn't matter is only making me depressed again."

Dick let the silence fall heavily for a while after that, much to Wally's apparent disappointment. In Dick's opinion, though, the silence was a necessity. It was also the only thing he could ever be certain of in his life. With a sigh, he lifted his legs and dropped head first from the bed, his palms already on the ground and landing him on his feet. Wally stared at him with interest.

"Fine," Dick said quietly, tugging the legs of his jeans down from where they'd ridden up and bunched on his upper thighs. "Just let me get Robin."

Considering how long it took to sneak out of the manor in uniform (there were too many cameras around the base of the Batcave to sneak from there) and the sheer amount of stealth Dick had to employ while Wally skipped along beside him, Dick thought it unfair that Commissioner Gordon still had the audacity to look behind him for Batman thirty minutes later. Aware of who could be listening in, Dick said nothing about Batman not being present. "Robin?" Gordon asked in surprise. "Where's Batman?"

"What's going on here?" Dick redirected.

Wally went cross-eyed with how close he was to Gordon's face. "Advantages of being a ghost, number 1: You can be creepy without being creepy."

"I thought number 1 was being able to float through walls?" Dick whispered as Gordon sighed and turned to face the Bank of America's Gotham branch as it was barricaded by police forces. "Or maybe teleportation?"

"Being able to float through walls wore off when I found out that I can still crash face first into mountains," Wally grumbled back.

"Huh?" Gordon hummed absentmindedly at Dick's whispered tones. Dick didn't answer and Gordon didn't press. The man puffed his cigarette anxiously. "Robbery in progress. Nothing we can do. It started an hour ago. Seven hostages; one child, a teenager, three women and two men."

"Pro robbers?" Wally asked.

"Do you know of them? Are they frequent thieves?" Dick rephrased.

"No," Gordon said with a frown. "I wouldn't be so worried if they were professionals. They're amateurs."

Wally's eyebrows shot up. "Then just race in there and kick their butts. How hard can that be if they don't even see you coming?"

Dick just shook his head and examined Gordon's face as the man walked back to the mouth of the alley, leaning against the brick of the closest building and letting the smoke of his cigarette dissipate through the air. Seconds later, Dick was back on a nearby roof, watching as Gordon walked slowly back to the commotion with a sluggishness to him that Dick didn't remember him having before. He didn't even glance back, already having known that the infamous Robin had disappeared.

"Amateurs are the most dangerous. You can't predict them because they're driven by adrenaline and fear. They make mistakes, and more often than not, those mistakes kill. They don't have to intend to kill their hostages for their hostages to be dead before the night ends," Dick explained, already judging the best ways of entrance into the building. He didn't need a blueprint to figure it out. Banks in Gotham tended to be similarly built.

Wally didn't have a quip for that, but it must have been because of how similar the situation sounded. The redhead cleared his throat and spoke. "Then let's go," he demanded. "I don't want another ghost around. This is  _my_  goddamn alternate physical plane and I don't like sharing."

Entering was relatively easy. Almost too easy, but Dick wasn't about to jinx his luck by repeating cheesy Hollywood lines. "In and out as quick as possible. I want to be gone before Batman hears about this."

"Isn't he at some party?" Wally whispered, though it was entirely unnecessary for him to do so.

"He has a police communication link."

Wally didn't question the matter further, but he coughed obnoxiously before Dick could crawl onto the exposed rafters above the main room of the bank. Below, the hostages had their backs against the front desk, with a blonde teenage girl clutching the head of a baby close to her. Beside her were three women, two brunette and one redhead, and two men, one of African American descent and the other a lanky blonde in a business suit. In front of them, two men in makeshift tattered black clothing had their shaky guns trained on them. Behind those two men were three others, talking to each other frantically and intensely gesturing with their weapons. Dick shot Wally a sharp look.

"Let me go below and look around. See if they have any hidden weapons," Wally said.

Dick felt an uneasy feeling swirl through the pit of his stomach as he looked at the hostages below. He wanted to say no, thought something would go wrong, yet wanted to say yes, thought that being uneasy was probably due to busting a robbery without a physical partner and blatantly disobeying his mentor. But all the while, there was the redheaded woman at the end of the line attempting to scoot behind the desk, no doubt to pull the silent alarm. He bit his lip and closed his eyes, giving a curt nod.

When he opened his eyes again, Wally was walking out from behind the desk. A weight slowly lifted from Dick's chest as the boy passed by the redhead woman and she remained unfazed. Wally, as quickly as a human could, began scanning the surrounding area, one eye on the woman. When Dick caught his gaze, he motioned that he was going to jump down because the woman had scraped the button on the bottom of her pants against the wood of the front desk and grabbed the attention of one of the men holding out his gun. The man began marching over to her and the teenager beside her as Wally pointed behind the desk with two fingers up. Two guns. As Dick landed softly behind the two men with guns and in front of the group arguing, concealed between their distracted attentions and the shadows, Wally pointed to the opposite end of the room behind a cushioned chair with one finger up. One gun.

When Dick appeared, the redheaded woman tensed, and her eyes darted to the other man who had yet to approach her, probably to see Dick better from the corner of her eyes without giving him away. Dick had to give a small smile to that. Smart woman. Recklessly somewhat clever woman. She reminded him of Wally.

Speaking of Wally, Dick wasn't sure what the boy intended to do after that. He couldn't touch anyone. Maybe he was planning on watching Dick's back as he fought, to warn the Boy Wonder about any sneak attacks. Whatever it was, th boy abandoned his post behind the front desk and raced to Dick's side.

That was also when the baby hiccupped.

Dick was impressed with the teenager's ability to keep the kid silent for so long, but it wasn't unusual for baby's to make obnoxious noises in precarious situations. Dick really shouldn't have been surprised. Yet, somehow, for some reason, he felt his heart spike to an all time high. Wally didn't look as concerned, only looking at Dick in worry when Dick hesitated at the split second that he was supposed to tackle the walking man in black. The baby started to softly cry as Dick's heart rate slowed and he opened his mouth to speak-

The baby screamed.

Wally froze in bewilderment as the teenage girl shuffled the baby in panic, confused and scared as to why the kid was suddenly erupting into a fit. Dick slid deeper into the shadows as one men from the arguing group groaned. "Shut that thing up!"

But the baby wouldn't be stopped, didn't even react as the man in black pointed his rifle at it and tears silently streamed down the girl's face. Instead, the baby kicked its feet and pointed its chubby arms at the- past the man in black.

Right at Dick.

Dick frowned. No, not quite. Not at Dick. Just a little to his right, the baby's eyes weren't on Dick at all. But as the baby blubbered uselessly, it wasn't the baby's eyes that Dick was worried about.

It was the two men with guns and all of the hostages.

"What the hell-!" the man shouted, eyes widened in panic as he raised his gun and began rapidly firing. Dick dodged, cursed that the man was amateur enough to fire aimlessly but not amateur enough to not know where to get an automatic rifle, and dropped a smoke bomb.

"Stop firing, you fucking piece of-"

"-the hell's goin' on-?"

"Stop! You're gonna make swiss cheese outta me!"

"Why are you firing at us?"

"Motherfucking Batman, that's what! Get'cher-"

"Calm the fuck down, it's just the kid!"

"Where'd he go?"

Meanwhile, the baby continued to scream, and Wally yelled with it. "The kid!" Wally exclaimed. "Dick, it can-"

"Wally!" Dick shouted. "Wally, direct me!" Screw the fact that everyone could hear him, it wasn't as if Wally was toting around a communication link.

"Where-oh, found you!" The resonating effect of Wally's dead voice prevented Dick from being able to pinpoint where he was, but by Wally's apparent view of him, Dick felt it safe to say that Wally had found a vantage point above. "Eight o'clock!"

Dick felt the satisfying contact of the heel of his foot impacting something hard. Noting that the object felt more like a rifle than it did a skull, Dick let his foot fall and swung with his other leg, sending the man carrying the rifle spinning onto the ground.

And so it continued, as the fog dissipated and Dick fought desperately to keep his attackers at bay without a team to help him, still with one eye on the hostages huddled beneath the front desk.

Wally continued to shout directions. "Behind you! Upper kick might be easier- he's trying to fake a- yup," and, "A guy's grabbing for the teenager!" and, "Four o'clock, with back up!"

When Dick's fist connected with the last man's face, that final blow leaving them groaning on the ground, Dick didn't let down his guard. He panted, fists positioned appropriately, feet perfectly spaced apart, staring with wild eyes at the circle of men around him.

The six hostages stared with wild eyes right back. "Uh, Robin…?" the African American man, who had yet to make a move or say a word, prodded hesitantly.

"They're done for," Wally reassured at the same time, and Dick glanced over his shoulder to see the ghost walking toward him with a nervous smile and zero eye contact.

"Yeah?" Dick said in reply to the man, but he kept his eyes trained on Wally. The man, uncertain if he should continue, remained awkwardly silent, and Dick didn't mind in the slightest.

"You done well, grasshopper," Wally said in a soft breath, puffing out his chest as if that would make the situation any less uncomfortable for himself.

"What was that?" Dick demanded. The hostages stilled quizzically. "Wally, answer me," commanded the Boy Wonder when Wally only ran his fingers nervously over the nape of his neck.

"That, that baby," Wally croaked. "It could, can, see me."

The hostages were keen in making sure that Dick made the first move, and he did. He fixed his gaze on the baby hiccuping from all the crying it had done and motioned for Wally to stay out of view. He crouched in front of the child and the teenager that held it. "Hey," Dick said to the baby. It hardly responded, only stared sleepily and miserably at the vigilante. The adults were shaking while the baby remained as cool as a cucumber. "Can you see him?"

The baby didn't answer, but it did shift its weight restlessly in its holder's arms, watching Wally with open eyes.

So Dick left.

He didn't know if Wally immediately followed. He didn't care. He didn't register Bruce's yelling when he entered the cave again in the traditional way, didn't register Bruce's silence afterwards that was louder than any yelling ever could be, because he didn't know what to feel. He wanted to feel happy. Someone else could finally see Wally. Though a baby, it proved at least somewhat that he wasn't crazy.

But then he turned on the news again and a rock settled into his gut once more as he watched as the stories were collected from the former victims, blankets draped around their shoulders. "-ally?" a blonde woman was saying with a concentrated look on her face. "Something like that. Wally. He-he kept saying Wally, even after the... men were down. I think he was talking on a bluetooth, or something like that." Bluetooth? Who used bluetooths anymore?

"Do you think that he could have been talking to Batman? Do you think that Batman's name is Wally?"

"I-I don't know, oh god, I don't-"

Dick was no longer paying attention, though. The only thing he was paying attention to was that Gordon had said there were seven hostages when Dick had gone in, but on that screen, Dick only counted six.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I...have no excuse except being utterly busy and unbelievably forgetful. I haven't had a weekend where I've had wifi in a long time. I also just got back from Aki Con (if you attended, I was Robin!), which was loads of fun but extremely exhausting. If you want more consistent updates, check out my account on FF.net! I update there first.
> 
> IMPORTANT NOTES AT THE BOTTOM. Also, this (and the next chapter) are very short, but I hope they're enjoyable anyway!
> 
> Thank you so much for the patience, everyone!

"Someone I know of died."

"Were you two very close?"

"No."

"Then you blame yourself."

"How would you know?"

"You wouldn't have brought it up otherwise."

"I don't know. Maybe. It was my choices that led to her death."

"What choices were that?"

"I didn't let Wally go. He got in the way."

* * *

It didn't take a detective to realise that both Batman and Bruce were pissed.

And that was a dramatic understatement. Not only had Dick disobeyed direct orders, gone out while 'not fully well', not told anyone where he was going and deactivated all of his suit's trackers, but he had caused one of the biggest taboos in the hero business.

He had killed somebody.

Not directly, of course, but all of the rules that he had broken had led to just that. Somebody's death. An innocent civilian's death. It had been the redheaded woman that had ironically reminded Dick so much of Wally, and seeing her mugshot come up on the news more than once a day; her wild hair, green eyes, freckles and all; made pain burn within his chest. On the third day of not interacting with anyone in the human world after Bruce's thorough verbal whipping, seated on the couch, Bruce passed by with only one more thing to say:

"That's why we never break protocol."

Dick made sure that he didn't again. In fact, he didn't leave the manor at all. He didn't even touch the cave, and if Young Justice asked about him, Bruce never said a word.

Other than Alfred and occasionally Bruce, Dick saw Wally. But Wally never spoke. It was unusual for Wally to be utterly silent, particularly in tense situations, so it regularly caused Dick to think back to what Miss. Frances had said. Did Wally reflect Dick's own emotions? Did Wally do everything that Dick wished he could do himself?

Yes, he did.

On the way to Dick's next visit with Miss. Frances, the car ride was uncomfortable. It would have been far more uncomfortable if Bruce were driving instead of Alfred, but Dick could give positive credit to getting three visits a week for the privilege of Bruce being too busy to pay attention to his ward. "How has psychiatry been, Master Dick? Have you been treated well?" Alfred asked in concern as they pulled up to the front of the quaint house-turned-office, and Dick figured that the British man had been up late reading too many horror stories about misdiagnosed patients again. He could barely bother to express surprise at finding out he was in psychotherapy, either. What did it matter? How was it any different?

"Yeah, it's interesting," Dick responded vaguely as he sluggishly opened the door to the street. Alfred looked like he wanted to ask more, but Dick had turned his back before the man was given the chance.

The waiting room used to be a living room adjacent to the house's kitchen, which was closed off by a screen. There were magazines scattered around with a gallon of water in the corner. All in all, the soft furniture's warm colours and sunlight streaming window was meant to look welcoming, but it only make Dick feel alienated. He contemplated walking directly upstairs to where the office was instead of waiting to be guided. He'd been there enough times. Before he could approach the first step, though, the screen obscuring the kitchen was pushed aside.

"Richard?" Miss. Frances chirped as she peered out. Nudging the screen aside with her shoulder, she presented Dick with roughly a dozen cookies and two glasses of milk balanced precariously on a plate. "Go on upstairs. I'll join you in a minute."

Dick shook his head and instead stepped forward to grab the two glasses of milk, lifting the weight from her arms as he began walking up the stairs. The lady beamed after him. Once in her office upstairs, she set the cookies gently on the coffee table between them. "You're awfully quiet today. Do you want to tell me what's bothering you?"

Dick shrugged.

"What about the person who passed away? You talked about her during our last session."

Another shrug.

Miss. Frances slid the plate of cookies closer to Dick as she reached beside her desk chair for her clipboard. "How's Wally been doing?"

A faint tingling sensation slowly crept down Dick's back and caused the hair of his neck to stand on end as he lazily scanned his eyes across the room. Seeing nothing, he twisted in the couch to look towards the far window, before turning back and folding his hands in his lap. "Is he not here?" Miss. Frances inquired, and Dick winced because her voice felt too loud for a too delicate situation.

Dick forced himself to reach forward for a cookie. He made no move to eat it, feeling the thickness of heavy, sticky saliva coating his tongue and throat in clumps. Instead, he slowly began crumbling the edges of the cookie into his hand. "I'm kind of mad at him," he finally admitted.

"Is it because of what happened last week with that person?"

"Mostly," agreed Dick.

"Is he mad at you?"

Dick paused. "I didn't do anything," he said with certainty. "But I was ignoring him while getting ready for school a couple days ago and he got upset. Then he left."

"Has he come back at all?"

Dick shook his head.

"Does he scare you?"

Dick froze, his fingers stilling over the remains of the broken cookie tucked between the creases of his palm. "No," he frowned.

"He's upset and angry with you, but he doesn't frighten you?" Miss. Frances clarified.

"No," insisted Dick defensively.

"I want you to do something for me," she said as she pressed her clipboard into her lap. Dick said nothing, waiting for her to elaborate, and she did. She put the board aside and walked to her desk, sliding open a drawer and plucking a small packet from within. "I want you to tell me the first thing that comes into your mind when you see these." She was gripping the cards in her hands too tightly, almost shakily. Her body was tense.

She looked excited.

Inkblots. Dick knew what those were. They were a vague test used to help diagnose various mental illnesses, where the way a person thought and felt would be interpreted from their interpretations of undetermined shapes. He knew it and he didn't care. His heart felt heavy, his head felt light, and his limbs felt loaded with lead.

"Can you tell me what this looks like?"

"A bat."

"A computer."

"A book."

"Cave."

"Airplane."

"Bike."

"House."

"The Joker."

Miss. Frances faltered for a moment at that response and turned the picture towards herself. After a brief examination, she silently went back to turning cards. But the Joker was suddenly on Dick's mind.

"Crowbar."

"Mask."

"Rope. Maybe a snake."

"Car."

"Cat."

"Hang glider."

"Pepperspray."

For fifteen minutes it continued, until the therapist - psychiatrist, Dick mentally corrected - set aside the cards and asked him questions. That was really just a nicer way to go about saying 'interrogated', though. Strangely enough, Dick felt too exhausted to analyse them. Finally, when their time was up, shown by a soft knock on the door, Dick couldn't have been more relieved.

"Are you alright to sit here for a bit, Richard? I just need to talk to Mr. Wayne for a few minutes."

Those few minutes stretched into nearly an hour. At one point, Dick had gone to press his ear against the door, but only caught bits and pieces of sentences. The pieces that he did catch did nothing to calm his nerves. "...convinced that everyone...Mr. Wayne…said that no one he knows has died...very vague...depressed...and agitated…" Dick sunk too far into thought about the alarming one-sided conversation he could catch and had to abruptly spring away when the doorknob was suddenly turned.

Miss. Frances entered again with a cell phone pressed against her ear. Dick quickly jumped onto the couch. Instead of Bruce entering as Dick had expected, though, it was Lucius Fox. The family friend greeted Dick with a kind smile and stood against the wall. "It's nice to see you again, Dick," he said. "How have you been?"

"Fine. You?" Dick responded. His palms felt sweaty.

"Fine," the man answered. "Mr. Wayne was too busy to come get you, so I'm taking you back home."

"Where's Alfred?" asked Dick cautiously. He could see Miss. Frances glance at him for a moment at his quick, almost hostile response. She scribbled something more onto her clipboard, quickly, her fingers enthusiastic, and the teenager felt his anxiety rise.

"Calm down, Dick," Lucius reassured softly. Softly, as if he were speaking to a child. "Alfred is fine. Mr. Wayne just preferred that I came and got you."

"Why?" Dick snapped.

"Richard, it's okay," Miss. Frances finally said, speaking up with a gleam in her eye, but she didn't explain what was so okay. Dick watched in silence, back ramrod straight and shoulders stiff as she retrieved something from a bag on her desk. She held up the small bottle to the light. "See this? I spoke with Mr. Fox and your doctor and we have all agreed for you to take this. Just one a day, every morning before you go to school. Can you do that for me?"

Dick eyed the bottle uncertainly. "Does Bruce know about this?"

Miss. Frances smiled. "Of course. You can ask him yourself. It's illegal to give you medication without informing your guardian, you know."

"Does he know what kind of medication it is?" he pressed.

Miss. Frances only slid the bottle across the table toward him. She made sure not to approach him, and Dick didn't blame her. He felt on edge and he couldn't pinpoint why, as if any sound would make him jump out of his skin. "I've been doing this for many years, Richard," Miss. Frances insisted, sitting down and leaning forward with her fingers crossed in her lap. "I promise you, you're going to be getting all the care that you need. You're due for a doctor's visit in one week. This is a trial run, to make sure that this is the medication for you. Don't worry about a thing."

With suspiciously shaking fingers, Dick reached down and lightly folded the bottle into his hand.

Miss. Frances stood up and Lucius seemed to sag a little in relief. Dick couldn't fathom why and was stuck on that thought, so he paid no mind to the adult's casual conversing as he was ushered out the door. Before he left, Miss. Frances gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder and a sharp smile. "I'll see you next week, okay?"

"Okay."

The car ride to the manor was as equally quiet as the car ride with Alfred from it. Lucius dropped him off a little ways from the front door. "I'm a busy man and don't want to offend Alfred by not going in for tea," he apologised as Dick shut the door. The teenager chuckled lightly to humour the man as he lazily rang the front door bell, watching Lucius' car pull away.

"Master Dick?" Alfred asked in surprise when the door opened. "Back already? Oh dear, it seems that the time has escaped me. Why hadn't you called?" The butler peered over Dick's shoulder to catch a glimpse of Lucius' tail light. "Was that Mr. Fox?"

"Do you know why Bruce didn't want you picking me up?" Dick asked as he stepped inside for the front door to be closed. Alfred hummed as he took Dick's jacket off and hung it on the coat rack.

"Yes," the elderly man admitted. Dick didn't know whether to give a sigh of relief or be on his guard. There was a muffled jingle from Dick's jacket, and Alfred paused for a moment before going and rifling through its pockets. He brought out the pill bottle with a slightly alarmed look. "What's this?"

"Medication. It's from Miss. Frances," Dick said emotionlessly, staring at the label of the bottle. "Don't change the subject."

Alfred turned the bottle over in his hand curiously, before taking off towards the kitchen. Dick followed at a slow pace. "Miss. Frances and Master Bruce suggested it wise that they see how you react to people you don't see very much, but whom you're supposedly friendly with," Alfred paused for a moment, his fingers grazing the marble counter of the kitchen. "You were friendly, I presume?"

"No," Dick deadpanned, eyes narrowed. "I was worried about you."

The bottle seemed to tighten just the smallest bit in Alfred's palm, and Dick didn't know how to react to the man's uncertain posture. "I assure you, Master Dick, I am perfectly well." He carefully opened a kitchen cabinet and slid the bottle onto a shelf.

Later that night, as Dick sat on the edge of his bed, looking at but not seeing the pile of videogames accumulated on his floor, he felt an unwelcome sensation push the hairs of his arms up.

He thought about the bottle with a label that never left his mind, sitting innocently on a shelf downstairs. Only, it didn't feel innocent. Its presence felt suffocating, as if it were lingering at Dick's door just waiting until he stepped out, to taunt him that he was no different. No different from the crazy men and women that he helped put away. Concoctions of medications like the one he was given were supposed to be in the cave. Examined to determine what might have gone wrong with the people that were given them, to determine if they might have been tampered with, or if they might have been abused. Not in the kitchen. They didn't belong in the kitchen. That was Richard Grayson's home, not Robin's. Those lives didn't intermingle.

Because Dick knew that drug. He'd seen  _Clozapine_  many times before. He'd held it many times before.

But before, it had never been meant for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SUPER DUPER IMPORTANT THING YOU MUST READ TO UNDERSTAND ANYTHING AT ALL:
> 
> This is GOTHAM. A city overrun with psychotic freaks. It's a corrupt city with laws that are not as heavily enforced as other places, if enforced at all (if anybody remembers, the Gotham police force was a corrupt, nasty and power hungry place before Gordon came around). This goes especially for medication and drugs. For those who don't know what I'm going on about:
> 
> Clozapine is an atypical antipsychotic drug normally used to treat severe schizophrenia. It's a drug meant only to be taken if the patient is resistant to other treatments tried before. It can have dangerous side effects and the patient needs to be regularly monitored and tested to make sure that it's going well. It cannot be taken by people under 16 or over 60. It's also very important that the person prescribing it knows the patient's full and total medical history, as well as allergies, blood related problems, etc.
> 
> Not only that, there are also far more steps involved in diagnosing schizophrenia than what Dick got. In a good, lawful society, people getting diagnosed with schizophrenia may even undergo brain scans to make extra sure that it's schizophrenia they're talking about and not some other mental illness (because illnesses can be easy to misdiagnose, particularly when it comes to illnesses having to do with the brain). However, just imagine how many schizophrenics there are in Gotham, or people with other varying mental illnesses. A lot. Imagine how many a psychiatrist working there sees, particularly a psychotherapist? Even more. In my opinion, what Miss. Frances did was wrong. But is it justified because it's the normal thing to do? Well, that's up to you guys.
> 
> OTHER REALLY IMPORTANT NOTES: If you didn't understand what the whole deal with Mr. Fox was, a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia is just that - paranoia. Extreme paranoia. This includes, but not limited to: believing everyone is trying to kill you, believing everyone is conspiring against you, withdrawing completely from social contact, turning against friends/loved ones, feeling like you're being watched all the time (by the government, your friends, etc.), you name it. It can be so severe that a person suffering could, say, receive water from their mother and freak out because they think there's poison in the water, and that their mother is trying to kill them. There are no limits. So Mr. Fox was there to see if Dick was being unreasonably hostile and withdrawn, and that suspicion and hostility is what Dick ended up expressing.
> 
> Many apologies for the long note and the long wait, but I hate to leave any confusion! If there are more unanswered questions, ask in the comments and I'll address them next chapter. Thanks for reading through all of this, you rock!


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